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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

(page

Chronological Table ....

. xviii

The Bohemian Ulysses:

The Wanderings of Lev, Lord of Rozmital and
Blatna, round the Courts of Western Europe . . i

A Master of War:

The Exploits and Hazards of Wilwolt of Schaumburg,
Soldier of Fortune . . . . . .123

The Adventures of a Palsgrave;

The Early Life and Vicissitudes of Frederick 11 . ,
Elector Palatine of the Rhine . . . .241

An Epic of Debts:

The Curious Fortunes of Hans von Schweinichen
at the Court of Duke Heinrich XL of Liegnitz in
Silesia 397

Illustrative Notes 491

List of Books consulted or quoted fre-
quently IN THE Notes 536

vii

Index

541

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Frederick, Palsgrave of the Rhine, later the Elector
Palatine Frederick II Frontispiece

From a woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer^ 1534, now in the British
Museum.

FACING PAGE

Frederick, Palsgrave of the Rhine, in Youth . . 248

From a painting by Albrecht Durer (?) in the possession of the
Grand Duke of Hesse* Darmstadt. Photograph by Bruck*

mann.

Frederick, Palsgrave of the Rhine 372

From a drawing by Albrecht Durer ^ 1523, in the British
Museum.

Map of Europe 7

From a woodcut illustrating the ‘ Historta de Europa ’ in * AEnece
Sylvii . , , Opera qua extant omnia,’ Basle^ I 57 l.

Map of Spain and Portugal 62

From Ibid.

Map of Holland 134

From Ibid.

Map of Franconia 164

From Ibid.

Map of Friesland 324

From Ibid.

Map of East Prussia 426

From Ibid.

Map of Western Europe in the Latter Half of the
Fifteenth Century [in Two Parts] . . .At the end

GENTLEMEN ERRANT

INTRODUCTION

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Europe was
still her own chief school and training-ground. The
Voyagers, a great and gallant company, were already
opening both the new gates of the West and the
ancient gates of the East to the desire and need of
man; and their labours and perils were to bring to
later generations, if not the Golden Age and Golden
World of their dreams, at the least a spacious earth and
a limitless horizon. But, in the days of the Renais-
sance, the small old continent of Europe still bound
the skies of the most of her children. It was by
dwelling in Europe’s courts, by fighting in Europe’s
quarrels and by praying before Europe’s shrines, that
the Complete Gentleman of every nation left ‘ shape-
less idleness ’ and graduated in the arts of life. Thus
he perfected his chivalry and thus he practised his
religion; thus, if poor, he earned his livelihood and
thus, if rich, he spent his patrimony ; and, if of high
estate, he furthered thus either his master’s business
or his own. In this way, too, he won strange and
chequered wisdom, and in this way he not seldom
lost such scanty book-learning as he might chance
to possess. It is probable, however, that the know-
ledge of men and things which he thus arduously

xii GENTLEMEN ERRANT

achieved was of more value to him in his uneasy
career than the reading of many books. Of all men,
says Coryat (and for once he is both eloquent and
wise), he may be most fitly promoted to the glorious
honours of public affairs who, * having before travelled
much and long with Ulysses, hath scene the divers
manners and rites and the beautiful cities of many
people.’

This, then, is the fashion in which the four noblemen
of these chronicles learned their lesson of living ; and
this lesson it is — quick with the tumult and colour
of the time — ^that renders their exploits worth the
remembrance. Their annals are chiefly occupied, it
is true, with individual experiences, and are by no
means concerned either with the policies and intricacies
of the many courts which their heroes visit, or with
the splendour of thought and art and discovery that is
wakening at their sides. But the researches of these
heroes are so various and so far-flung, their adventures
so characteristic and so gay, that they cannot fail to
give a vivid picture of their time and setting.

For, with untiring industry and unquenchable hope,
these Gentlemen Errant seek the ways and suffer the
whims of a world of nations. Their Odysseys reach
from Salisbury to Cracow and from Portugal to
Denmark. They traverse the humming plains of
Burgundy and Flanders, the leafy parks of England,
the mellow gardens of France. They wander on the
desolate Spanish uplands and in the fruit-filled
Spanish valleys. They tread the lovely streets and
lawless highways of Italy. They lodge in the squalid
sties of Poland and camp on the dreary battlefields
of the Low Countries. In the great Germanic Empire
they are at home ; they possess her stretching forests

INTRODUCTION

xiii

and her strong grey castles, and in her high-walled,
rich-stored cities they hold their courts.

Many, too, are the famous figures that appear in
this pageant of years ; for the period which the annals
cover is one of the most important in European
history. Within this century and a half happen the
Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-
Reformation ; the distribution of the printing-press,
the revelations of Copernicus and the discovery of
America ; the growth, the triumph and the disintegra-
tion of the Holy Roman Empire ; the evolution of
England from the brilliant adolescence of the Planta-
genets to the splendid maturity of the Tudors; the
transformation of France from the formless impotence
of half-dead feudalism to the ordered might of an
absolute sovereignty ; the conversion of Spain from
a land of chaos to a land in bondage to the uttermost
letter of law and orthodoxy ; the abasement of Italy
through the indignity of her politics and the exaltation
of Italy through the supremacy of her art. And
though these chronicles are but scattered pebbles on
a crowded shore, though their heroes pass strenuous
lives in almost perfect ignorante of the vast move-
ments that are surging round them, yet even the
meanest has not remained untouched by the mighty
tide. The readers of history know more than the
makers of history, and many a detail — insignificant
to him who wrote it, though faithfully recorded— has
for the student of to-day its appointed corner in that
great temple of the past which each one must, in a
sense, build for himself.

Of my own part in this book not much need be
said. It has seemed to me that the early memorial
literature of Middle Europe is not so familiar to

xiv GENTLEMEN ERRANT

ordinary English readers as it might be ; since, if in
this respect Germany and Austria cannot rival the
wealth of France, or even of England and Italy,
they yet possess many chronicles of life and of
travel of far more than merely patriotic interest.
The Gentlemen of Germany, wrote the Gentleman
of Provence^ — himself a diligent scrutiniser of men
and marvels — ‘ are voyaging folk, searching out
strange things no less and perhaps more than any
people upon earth.’ And, although in the sixteenth
century Sebastian Franck could still lament that
there was scarce another nation so uninstructed as
Germany in its own achievements,* the records of
these inquiring spirits are neither so few nor so
faulty as he and even later writers supposed. I
have therefore chosen from among such of the less
well-known chronicles as I chance to be acquainted
with, four which appear to deserve a wider welcome
than as yet they have found ; * and have endeavoured,
by suppressing or compressing their more ' prolixious
and Teutonic ’ divagations, to render them agreeable
reading. Limits of space have forbidden the inclusion
of much excellent material both in the selected and
in the rejected annals, and the task has not been
accomplished without much heart-searching and
regret. My guiding-star through the difficulty is
shown by the title under which the four histories
are grouped. For I have followed the fortunes of

^ Antoine de la Sale, in La Salade,

® ‘ There is scarce any nation that knows so little of itself as the
German. ... Not that they, so innuinerable a people, have not done
and spoken much worthy of record . . . but that none have set down
their speeches and deeds.’ Other nations have written great books
about themselves : * only the warlike Germans remain soldiers and
simple landsknechts, caring not for fame, leaving art, language, know-
ledge, wise words and deeds to others.’ (Vorrede zur Germania,)

® See Illustrative Notes, i.

INTRODUCTION

those pilgrims of adventure whose vagabond busi-
nesses and pleasures promised the most lively and
comprehensive panorama of the backgrounds of the
Renaissance and the Reformation.^

This, with the fact that in their dates they succeed
one another more or less closely, is the thread that
binds the papers together; and this, coupled to a
desire that the epoch should be seen so far as pos-
able through the eyes of its own children, must be
my excuse for the array of quotation-marks and
footnotes that disfigure their pages. The notes lay
no claim to completeness or to being other than the
chance gleanings of a very haphazard harvester.
A due reaping of the wide and fruitful fields from
which they have been gathered would be a serious
labour, not, in the pleasant phrase of Sir Thomas
Browne, ‘to be performed on one legg.’

I am tempted, indeed, to shelter my faults both of
knowledge and of skill behind the admirable defences
of two masters of their craft. With Professor W. P.
Ker * I would venture to write : ‘ Many serious diffi-
culties have been evaded . . . and many things have
been taken for granted, too easily. My apology must
be that there seemed to be certain results available
for criticism, apart from the more strict and scientific
procedure which is required to solve the more
difficult problems. ... It is hoped that something may
be gained by a less minute and exacting consideration
of the whole field, and by an attempt to bring the
more distant and dissociated parts of the subject

^ I have also been of necessity influenced by the difficulty in some
cases of procuring the originals. Thus it took two years to obtain
even a second-hand copy of the one edition — ^itself some fifty years
old, and most scantily equipped with notes and elucidations — of the
biography of Wilwolt von Schaumburg ; while of the elder Eyb's
Annals it has proved impossible to procure a copy at all.

® In his Preface to Epic and Romance (1896 ; new edition, 1908).

xvi GENTLEMEN ERRANT

into relation with one another in one view.’ And with
M. Anatole France ^ I would explain: ‘J’ai beaucoup
accordd, j’ai peut-6tre trop accordd au ddsir de faire
vivre le lecteur au milieu des choses parmi les hommes
du XV“ siecle. . . . Ce n’est pas par affectation de
style ni par gout artiste que j’ai gard6 le plus que
j’ai pu le ton de I’epoque et prdferd les formes
archa'iques de la langue toutes les fois que j’ai cru
qu’elles seraient intelligibles ; c’est parce qu’on change
les iddes en changeant les mots et qu’on ne pent
substituer aux termes anciens des termes modernes
sans altdrer les sentiments ou les caractdres.’ The
diversity of my sources has, however, made vain any
hope of preserving even a semblance of that unity
of style which M, Anatole France so brilliantly
advocates and achieves; while the development of
the art of biography during the century and a half
which the four chronicles cover renders it probable
that to many readers of to-day the book will prove
more entertaining at the end than at the beginning.

My chief helpers have been my husband and the
many volumes whose names appear in the notes or
in the list of authorities consulted. But I also wish
to thank very warmly Professor W. P. Ker and
Mr. Charles Whibley for much encouragement and
advice; Mr. W. M. Macdonald and Mr. O. H. Prior
for reading portions of the MS. and the proof-sheets;
Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte for practical (if unavail-
ing) assistance in my efforts to trace the passage
through England of Rozmital and Schaumburg;
and Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. D. G. Hogarth, Mr.
Lionel Cust, Mr. H. Mai'hew, Miss N. Carter,
Miss Margaret Clifford, Miss F. Beales, with many

' In his Introduction to I'tf de Jeanne d’Arc (1908).

INTRODUCTION xvii

officials of the British Museum and London Library,
for various acts of kindness and help. My debt is
even greater to H. E. Count Mensdorff-Pouilly-
Dietrichstein, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador
in London, to Prince Lobkowitz, Land Marschall
of Bohemia, to the Officials of the Imperial Royal
Archives and Imperial Family Library at Vienna,
and, not least, to Mr. Campbell Dodgson of the
British Museum, for the generous and patient manner
in which, by their influence and knowledge, they
have sought to further my search (in the main un-
happily fruitless for portraits, whether of those who
lived or of those who wrote these Odysseys of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

For — to make an end — Odysseys they are, these
chronicles : though it may seem an arrogance to
borrow the incomparable mantle of Ulysses for
wanderers of so small weight in the world as are
their heroes of a day. But it is the spirit, not the
achievement, that makes the disciple, and, for all their
insignificance, these errant and often erring gentlemen
strut their little hours with a will. They have seen
and known much ; cities of men and manners, courts
and the ways of kings. They have tossed in ships
and made the long roads their home. They have
loved in haste and married at leisure, and on the
ringing plains of Europe they have drunk delight.
And, search as I may, I find no other word than
Odyssey to express the tangle of travel, battle,
love, penury and adventure that knits and knots
their lives.

^ See Illustrative Notes, 2.

Holy Roman
Emperors

1 ^0^ i

Kii^s

Eii^s

(Germany).

England

France.

Portugal.

1460

Frederick III.

Henry VI.

Charles VII

Henry IV.

Alfonso V.

and Eleonore

Edward IV

Louis XI.

John II

of Portugal

m Elizabeth

and Charlotte

and Juana

Woodville

of Savoy

of Portugal

and Juana

1470

1480

Henri quez

Isabella
and Ferdinand

Ferdinand 11

m. Juana of
Castile, * the
Beltraneja '

Edward V.
Richard III.
Henry VII.

Charles VIII.

and Isabella

John II.

‘the Perfect’

m. Elizabeth
of York

1400

Maximilian I.

m, Anne of
Brittany

Emmanuel

m. Bianca

‘the Fortunate’

1500

Maria Sforza

Henry VIII.

Louis XII.
w. A. of Brittany

Juana* la Loca"
and Philip I.

m Isabella of
Castile

M, Maria of
Castile

1510

M, Catherine
of Aragon

m. Mary Tudor
Francis I.

Charles I.

m, Eleonore

1520

Charles V.

and Claude of
France

later Emperor
Charles V.

of Austria

crowned at

1530

Aix-la-Chapelle

m. Isabella of
Portugal

crowned at
Bologna

m. Anne

Boleyn

m. Eleonore of
Austria, Queen
of Portugal

John HI.

1540

«4. Anne of
Cleves

Edward VI.

Henry IL

1550

Mary, m. Philip

Ferdinand I,

of Spain

Philip II.

Sebastian

Elizabeth

Francis II.

1560

Maximilian 11

Charles IX.

1570

1580

Rudolph II.

Henry III.

Henry the Card.

United to Spam

TABLE

•giy

Dukes of Bur-
gundy.
Regents of
NetEerlands.

Philip ‘the Good’
and Isabella
of Portugal
Charles the
Bold

m. Marg. of York

Mary, m, Maxi-
milian

Philip ‘ the
Handsome ’
*A. of Ravenstein
Eng of Nassau

Alb. of Saxony

Philip assumes
government

Margaret of
Austna

Mary, Queen
01 Hungary

Emmanuel of
Savoy

Marg. of Parma

Ferd. of Alva

L. de Requesens

Don John of
Austna
William 1.
of Orange

Leading Events
(Taking of Constantinople, 1453).

Pius II. : Pope. Matthias Corvinus : King of Hungary.
Paul II. : Pope.

War of Public Weal. Rozmital’s Journey.

Fredenck III. and Schaumburg in Italy.

Sixtus IV. : Pope Albert Achilles ; Elect, of Brandenburg.
Conference at Treves. Siege of Neuss.

Battles of Granson, Morat, Nancy.

Mary of Burgundy d. Palsgrave Fredenck 6.

Innocent VIII. : Pope.

Bartholomew Diaz rounds C. of Good Hope
Swabian League founded. Maximilian at Bruges.

Sieges of Sluys and Granada Discovery of America.
Alexander VI. : Pope. Siege of Arras.

Battle of Fomovo Great Diet of Worms.

Conquest of Friesland
Louis KII. conquers Milan.

Philip and Palsgrave Fredenck in Spain.

Bavarian War of Succession. Julius 11. ; Pope.

League of Cambray.

Break-up of League of Cambray.

Heniy VIII. and Maximilian in Netherlands.
LeoAtPope. Battle of Marignano.

Charles goes to Spain.

Charles m England : May. Field of Qoth of Gkild ; June.
Diet of Worms ; Luther. The Knights’ War.

Peasants’ War. Qement VH. : Pope.

Battles of Pavia and Mohacz. Sack of Rome.

Siege of Vienna.

Diet and Confession of Augsburg.

Repulse of Turks.

Expedition of Tunis. Paul III. : Pope.

Truce of Nice between Francis and Charles.

Suppression of Monasteries in England.

Palsgrave becomes Elector Palatine Frederick II.

The Schmalkaldic War. Battle of Mahlberg.

Sigismund 11. : King of Poland.

Siege of Metz. Hans v. Schweinichen d.

Abdication of Charles V. Elector Palatine Fredenck 11. d»
Capture of Calais.

Death of Gustavus Vasa, K. of Sweden.

Religious Wars in France begin.

Inquisition in Netherlands. Soleiman II. d,

Insurrection in Netherlands. ' Council of Blood.’

Battle of Lepanto.

Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Anjou : King of Poland.
Conde invades France. Sack of Antwerp.

Drake’s Voyage round the World.

Deposition of Heinrich XI. ofLieguitz.

GENTLEMEN ERRANT

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

INTRODUCTORY

Of the twin narratives that preserve the joumeyings
of the Bohemian baron, Lev of Rozmital, through the
kingdoms of Western Europe, the first — a ‘ brief and
jocund commentary’ — ^was written in his native
tongue by one Schaschek of Mezihortz, a Bohemian
gentleman of family. The original record has disap-
peared, but a Latin translation, accomplished by
Stanislas Pawlowski, Canon of Olmtitz, and published
a century later, supplies this loss. The title under
which the diary is presented to the world swells with
a pompous dignity eminently proper alike to its lofty
extractidn and its distinguished purpose. ‘ Commen-
tarius brevis et jucundus itineris atque peregrina-
tionis pietatis et religionis causa susceptae ab Illustri
et Magnifico Doniino, Domino Leone libero Barone de
Rosmital et Blatna, Johannse Reginse Bohemiae fratre
germano, Proavo illustris et Magnifici Domini Zdenco
Leonis liberi Baronis de Rosmital et Blatna, nunc
supremi Marchionatus Moraviae Capitanei. Ante
centum annos Bohemice conscriptus, et nunc primum
in latinam linguam translatus et editus. Ex condensu
Reverendissimi Domini, Domini Joannis Olomucensis
EpisCopi Anno Domini MDLXXVIL’ So runs the
high-sounding legend. It must be admitted, however,
that the manner of the contents scarcely fulfils the

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

promise of their title-page. For the style is rugged,
with no semblance of literary effort or grace ; and it
is hut the ever-varying interest of its theme that
enables the reader, faint but pursuing, to reach
the end.

The second of the two chroniclers was one Gabriel
Tetzel, who came of an old and ‘Council-eligible’
family of Nuremberg. This record, composed almost
certainly from memory after his return from the ex-
pedition, is written in the unpolished German of his
day and province; and, like its companion, lays no
great claim to the allurements of a literary style. But
Gabriel is fortunately possessed of an untiring love
for both the curious and the commonplace, and it is
from him that we gather the most of those lesser
observations — ‘details of superfluitie and delicious-
nes ’ — that help so well to adorn the picture of any
period. Moreover, his affluent pen reproduces so
many of the strange fantastical legends that haunt
the pathway of travellers, that at times he becomes a
poet despite himself.

Indeed, in their love for legend and miracle both
Schaschek and Tetzel are irrepressible, and the aston-
ishing abundance of incomparable relics with impos-
sible origins and properties that everywhere meet
their gaze would almost engender a belief — if not in
metempsychosis — at least in the miraculous multipli-
cation after death of sainted appurtenances and limbs.
But in this the scribes are the true sons of their day.
In no epoch has the human spirit sought out the
marvellous and the symbolical more unremittingly
than in the Middle Ages. Real life was then so
difficult and so painful, protectors so few and perse-
cutors so many, that the smaller people of the world
were driven for consolation to visionary joys and
imaginary succours. In the comfortable enchantment
of fantasy and myth, or the scarcely more tangible
benefits of miraculous intervention, they sought amends
for the dangers and distresses of existence; and

INTRODUCTORY 3

neither angels nor devils, saints nor sorcerers, miracles
nor prodigies came without welcome to their receptive
minds. Nor was the Church backward in supporting
their strangest superstitions, since many a pagan fable
and romantic legend flourished under her hospitable
roof, while the wonder-working habits and histories
of her myriads of relics were among the strongest
weapons in her armoury.

And, although the Middle Ages were already passing
away, superstition was not dying with them. For the
fifteenth century — less creative, perhaps, but no less
credulous than its predecessors — ^had npt only inherited
this characteristic in all its fullness but was to hand it
on to succeeding generations with undiminished force.
Indeed, a fresh and powerful impetus had newly been
given to the marvel-mongers of Europe by the enter-
prise of Prince Henry of Portugal ; and that ‘ curiosity
of far-off things ’ that had once welcomed the Eastern
mysteries of a Marco Polo, and even of a Mandeville,
was now eagerly drinking in rumours of the yet
stranger wonders of the West.

The credulity, therefore, of Schaschek and Tetzel,
though fatal perhaps to their reputation as genuine
historians, reflects no special discredit on their trust-
worthiness as painters of an epoch : indeed, it only
adds both to the truth and to the charm of the picture.
It is true, however, that it not infrequently leads them
into the unforgivable sin of the wandering chronicler.
For, so passionate is their absorption in the less admir-
able manifestations of their religion, that at times they
wholly confine their account of some town or province
to a detailed and tedious enumeration of its relics and
sanctities. In fact, if guided solely by these historians
and by the measure of attention which they mete out
to the various sights of each city, you would suppose
that the journey had no other goal than the adoration
of a toe of St. Thomas at Canterbury or of a tooth of
Sant’ lago in Spain. Nor, by the way, is it altogether
certain that this view of the matter is incorrect, since

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

it must be admitted that the ascription of political
motives to the adventure is based upon conjecture and
probability alone.

One other characteristic of the Bohemian chroniclers
(and a very vexatious one) is their perfect dis-
regard for correctness of nomenclature. The names
which they severally ascribe both to the persons and
to the places that they visit are often remarkable both
for their ingenuity and for their diversity, and the two
are seldom in entire agreement even as to the route
by which the ambassador and his company proceeded
on their way. Schaschek’s version is without doubt
the more correct of the two, being evidently the official
report of the expedition, drawn up on the spot and
for the use of his master. His errors are, at all events,
not owing to carelessness, as he has laboriously tran-
scribed the names of countless villages of no possible
interest or importance, together with the distances and
documents of each smallest stage of the journey. It
is infinitely to be regretted that the map to which he
occasionally refers— this and that town being some-
times spelt otherwise in mappd — is no longer forth-
coming.

‘ But, howsoever, strange and admirable.’ For,
when all is said, the joint labours of these pilgrims of
adventure have achieved a many-coloured and many-
figured tapestry of Europe in the fifteenth century ;
and the most of her great sovereigns and cities pass as
in a track of dreams before our eyes. From country to
country and from court to court the gay procession
goes: wondering, worshipping, tilting, dancing; fighting
when there is need and feasting when there is oppor-
tunity. And on every page appear the ‘knightly
courtly and saintly’ exploits, the pomps and prides
and pieties, that adorned the life and occupied the mind
of a person of quality in the shining days of the Re-
naissance.

Something, indeed, of the baseless fabric of dreams
these diaries betray ; something of their indistinctness,

INTRODUCTORY

something of their incompleteness, something of their
improbability ; but something too of their tantalising
and ever-changing charm. They are the issue, it is
true, not of shaping fantasies but of the plain and
often painful ways of daily life; and they are not
chiselled by cunning or delicate hands. Yet they are
the true stuff that dreams are made pf, and along with
them we move in a pleasant region of sumptuous
kings and proud princesses ; of knights and saints
and dwarfs and pirates ; of jewelled swords and jocund
singers ; of perilous seas and imperishable sanctities ;
of skiey towers and solemn temples ; of secret forests,
sudden dragons and scented mountain paths ; of high
hills citied to the top and rich sea-palaces shining
with silver and alabaster and pearl. Their earth,
though curiously mingled with the roaring, ruffling,
rushing earth of Villon and of Commynes, is still
the gracious earth of the Golden Legend and the
Roman de la Rose, an earth gay with poetry and
pageantry, with ‘antique fables and fairy toys,’ with
the love of God and the passions of men. It is
an earth that but yesterday sheltered St. Francis and
his little sisters the birds ; St. Elizabeth and her lap
full of roses; St. Brandon and his trees thick with
fallen angels making a delectable noise ; St. Joan with
her holy feet and her burning sword. The devious
Louis XL may be hypnotising France, and every
country may be tangled and mangled by civil war;
but the lovely Melusine still cries from her enchanted
towers, and Theodoric and his knights still haunt the
falling castle of Verona.

Nor is this all, for the chronicles have also their
prosaic but no less valuable side, and each new chapter
of the pilgrimage has its own background of ancient
peoples, of ancient manners and customs, and of the
wide strange landscapes lying in the twilight of a
morning world.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

‘ Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un bon voyage.’

Joachim du Bellay.

In the year of our salvation 1465, Lev Lord of
Rozmital and Blatna set forth— peregrinus et alter
Ulysses, as Balbin narties him — to search out the
western corners of Europe.

In his own country of Bohemia he was already a
figure of considerable eminence. Noble and of ancient
race, he was from boyhood deeply immersed in that
inextricable tumult of party passions which, for the
thirty middle years of the fifteenth century, tore and
entangled the kingdoms of Bohemia, of Hungary and
of Poland. Nor had the marriage of his sister Joanna
to George of Podebrad, the first ‘ reformed ’ king of
the Bohemians, lessened his responsibilities.

Fifteenth-century Bohemia was, indeed, a very
whirlpool of conflicting tides — a witches’ sabbath,
wherein religion and rebellion, piety and politics,
dogma and doubt and death, were rioting together.
‘ In our age,' wrote iEneas Sylvius, ‘ much that is
singular has happened there. Battles innumerable
have taken place. Blood has been poured forth like
water. Cities teive been levelled with - the ground.
Religion has '•been despised and trodden under foot.’
Emperors and kings had not availed to quench the
climbing fires of heresy. And if from the ashes of a
Huss or a Hieronymus the flame of reform leaped clear,

From a woodcut illustrating: the ‘ Historia de Furopa ’ of iFneas Sylvius, ed. of 1571.

THINGS IN BOHEMIA 7

this owed no meagre measure of its brilliancy to the
world of smoke and ruin that was its background.

Yet, through all the murk of Papalism and of
Utraquism — above the ignorant obstinacies of Imperi-
alists or of Nationalists, of Calixtines or of the dwellers
on Mount Tabor — certain strong and sturdy figures
emerge. And foremost amongst these are George of
Podebrad and his brother-in-law, the Lord Lev of
Rozmital and Blatna.

These two men belonged alike to that fierce and
arrogant nobility which for centuries had ruled and
wrestled in the unhappy land. Their families had
long been rivals in an unceasing struggle for political
ascendency and themselves had started life in opposing
camps. George was a hot Hussite, Lev a convinced
Catholic ; and, after the accession of Ladislas Postumus,
both aspired to control the baby King. In 1450,
however, Podebrad, by a master-stroke of policy, allied
himself to a daughter of the house of Rozmital, and
thus secured the adherence, not only of her kinsmen,
but also of the bulk of the Catholic nobility. In the
same year he was unanimously chosen to be regent
during the minority of the sovereign, and on the tragic
death of Ladislas, in 1458, he was elected king.

Lev had thrown in his lot unreservedly with his
new-made brother-in-law, and now supported him to
the utmost in the furtherance of the various schemes
and reforms with which he strove to stay confusion
and to win the respect of Europe. The Emperor was
on their side. This, however, signified but little,
seeing that Frederick III. ever required rather than
bestowed assistance. On the other hand stood the
Papacy,^ bitterly and unrelentingly hostile. Still,
therefore, the country was racked by dissension and
worn by war. Envoys and legates fled fruitlessly
hither and thither, to and fro ; diplomacy was wholly
discomforted. Finally, in 1465, the crisis came, and

^ Pius II. was, till his death in 1464, an eager enemy of Podebrad,
and his policy was continued by Paul II.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

King George was threatened with excommunication
should he not repent within the narrow term of eighty
days. And the flame of revolt flared fiercer than ever.

Thus were things in Bohemia when Lev of Rozmital,
at the age of forty, set forth on his ‘ grand excursion
throughout the world ’ ; and, since the support of the
greater powers was now a matter of living importance
to Podebrad, it may be surmised that the pilgrimage
had a political rather than a pious intent. No mention,
however, is made in the chronicles of matters of state
or of diplomacy. Lev’s aim, as revealed by his scribes,
being merely ‘to visit all Christian kingdoms and
principalities, both spiritual and of this world, in
German and in foreign lands ; and especially would
he to the Holy Grave and to the dear lord St.
James.’

Nor, indeed, was this last excuse an inadequate one
for even the most pompous peregrination. It was, as
has been said, an age of strange fears and sudden
terrors. Poison, pestilence and Paynim were knocking
ever at the gates, and the peoples of Europe, stirred by
hasty piety, had acquired a constant and contagious
passion for pilgrimage.^ The ‘ Sacred Places ’ that
were before many years to arouse the wrath of Erasmus
became an irresistible magnet to countless thousands.

‘ Thither, over wide spaces of sea and land, run aged
bishops, leaving their flocks untended ; thither speed
persons of quality, forsaking their families and their
estates ; thither hasten husbands who should be guard-
ing the conduct of their children and of their wives ;
thither travel young men and maidens, imperilling
their morals and their modesty. Many make the
journey again and again, achieving naught else their
whole lives long.’ * Moreover, of all the famous roads
to holiness, the well-worn way to the great mountain

^ ‘ Cornelius : What ? have you been seized with the same disease ?
has the contagion reached you too? Arnold: I have visited Rome
and Compostella.^ (Erasmus, Colloquy on Rash Vows.)

^ Erasmus, Defence of Colloquy on Rash Vows.

THE HOLY GOAL 9

shrine of Sant’ lago di Compostella was perhaps the
favourite. Invented by the Spaniards as a counter-
part to that glorious Jerusalem which, owing to the
presence upon their peninsula of infidel invaders, they
were themselves forbidden to visit, the site had quickly
acquired a renown of singular sanctity. From all parts
of Europe — from England^ as from the most eastern
limits of Prussia— the roads to this holy spot were
ceaselessly thronged. A race of wanderers (Jacobs-
briider) had even been called by its name and a library
of guide-books for the pilgrimage composed ; while
its peculiar patron St. James — ‘the son of thunder,’
‘ Christ’s learning knight ’ — ^was held up to admiration
by the blessed lady of Dante as that ‘ baron ’ ® for
whom all the world was then visiting the far-off savage
country of Galicia.

In any case, whatever the motives of the mission.
Lev started with safe-conducts and letters of commenda-
tion both from the Emperor and from his own sister,
the Bohemian Queen ; and whithersoever he went he
was treated with the honour (or dishonour) usually
accorded to ambassadors and envoys of the highest
political importance. Whithersoever he went, a free
passage was granted to himself, his company and
his encumbrances : to his budgets, bags and bundles,
arms and habiliments of war, horses and harnesses,
deeds and documents, gold and silver, carriages and
coffers, jousting equipages and riding furnitures.*
Whithersoever he went, also, whether by day or by
night, by sea, land or sweet waters, he was to be

^ When William Wey made his pilgrimage to Sant’ lag-o in 1456, he
saw in the harbour of Corunna no less than eighty pilgrim vessels
* cum topcastellis’ and four ‘sine topcastellis,’ thirty-two of these being
English.

2 Froissart also speaks of ‘the baron St. J^es ’ of Compostella.

® ‘Ejjuis, valisiis, bulgiis, fardellis, armis, habilimentis guerrae,
harnesiis, litteris, auro, argento, carriagiis, capsis, jocalibus, vecturis,
et aliis rebus.’ This was the customary form. Many passports are
still more elaborate and include such details as ‘bogeis, bagis, stufFuris,
cistis, pixidibus, papiris, munimentis, instrumentis,’ etc. (Cf. Rymer’s
Fcedera.)

lo THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

unhampered and undelayed by any kind of tax or
tribute : by any conceivable extortion of custom-house
or of toll-booth— of passage, pesage, pontage, boatage,
baitage, rollage, runnage, tallage, stallage, towage,
stowage, weightage, freightage, skippage, diskippage,
or any other ‘ age ’ — in short, by any imposition or
impost soever. Schaschek, the Bohemian secretary,
reproduces no less than twenty-two of these passports,
though their variations are but slight and of small
interest.^ The letter of Joanna alone provides a brief
interlude of sisterly feeling and tenderness, which
shows not amiss in the dreary circus of diplomatic
formality.

The month was November and the day the morrow of
St. Catherine’s — a Thursday propitious to enterprise —
when the travellers rode out of Prague and quitted that
famous ‘desert country near the sea’ for the inland
joys of Germany. Lev had collected and caparisoned
a goodly retinue of forty nobles, bannerets* and
serving-men, together with two and fifty horses barded
and trapped in gallant fashion and a ‘ chamber-chariot ’
for the conveyance of his household and appurten-
ances. Nor must the notable distinction of his two
chroniclers be forgotten, since in this detail at least he
resembled the knights-errant of yore, who ‘ each of
them ’ (as Don Quixote knew) ‘ had one or two wise
■men, of purpose, that did not only write their acts,
but also depainted their very least thoughts and toys,
were they never so hidden.’ It is true that in this
case the two somewhat ingenuous scribes are far from
recording the ‘very least thoughts’ of their master.

^ One of the two English safe-conducts is given in R3nner, vol. xi
p. 560. It is drawn out ‘ pro Leone Domine de Rozuntall.’

* ‘Panerherren.’ ‘The common people,’ wntes Butzbach, ‘readily
call all who, in manners or apparel, in station or in riches, differ from
themselves^ by the title of Sir. Whence they called even me, unknown
as I was, Pan Hensel ... or Panitz, to wit Junker.’

THE START n

But here are his ‘toys’ and his toilings generously
set forth.

The stormy land of Bohemia was, however, scarcely
capable of providing the full tale of gorgeous accoutre-
ments required by Rozmital and his pilgrims, and a
long stay had to be made in Nuremberg for the
achievement of this estimable purpose. ‘ He lay in
my house several days,’ writes Tetzel of his new lord,
‘ furnishing his needs, and he apparelled himself and
all his servants in red, with much gold and velvet
showing, and sleeves of pearl ; ^ and he took with him
his master-cook and his steward and his comptroller,
and maintained in all things his princely rank.’ It was
here, in fact, that Lev enlisted the second of his
secretaries, and it was perhaps owing to the sym-
pathetic offices of Gabriel, who was to be burgomaster
of the city but a few years later, that the Bohemian
noble received so warm a welcome. He was, at all
events, treated with great hospitality and granted the
sight of the priceless Imperial relics, the rings on the
fingers of the travellers being touched by the priests
with the sacred spear of Calvary and thus becoming
‘ a present and certain remedy against any side-aches
or attacks.’ The Nurembergers also generously
equipped the venturesome little company for its
dangerous excursion with mortars, bombards and
other engines of war, in the making whereof they
excelled;* and altogether ‘my lord lived there sociably
and affably.’

Thus, then, in the glory of new armour, new apparel
and newly sanctified antidotes for every ill — with, in

* In many parts of Germany men were forbidden at this date to
have trimmings and embroideries anywhere save on their arms and
necks ; so they made the most of these, and decked sleeves and collars
bravely. Bernhard Rohrbach {Liber Gestorum) tells how in 1464 he
adorned his brown suit with sleeves of silver embroidered in ‘ earth-
colour, like a field that lieth fallow.’ (Cf. Schultz.)

* Nuremberg’s gpreat arsenal of artillery is described by many tra-
vellers, Beads in particular expatiating on the variety and thorough-
ness of the city’s preparations against a siege.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

brief, the full pomp and circumstance requisite for the
mildest enterprise in those splendid but perilous days
— behold the Bohemian embassy emerging from the
majestic streets of the Franconian city^ and riding
bravely towards an unknown north. Nor, indeed,
was a certain degree of courage without its uses,®
since the earlier portion of the pilgrimage lay through
German lands and here, owing to bitterness of religious
and political feeling, the brother-in-law of George of
Podebrad was by no means invariably welcome.

The opening experiences of the travellers were,
however, auspicious enough; for at Anspach, their
first halt, they found an amiable host in the Margrave
of Brandenburg. This was ‘.blazing, far-seen ’ Albert
Achilles, that master of chivalry and of statesmanship,
of courage and of craft, and, as this prince was a
loyal, if momentary, supporter of the Imperial power,
he treated King George’s ambassador with signal dis-
tinction. ‘ Dances, games and the representation of
plays’ prevailed, while, the better to mark the im-
portant occasion, a great tourney was held in the
presence of the Margrave — himself the invincible
champion of seventeen such contests® — and of his
lively consort Anna of Saxony. Three of the Bohe-
mians, anxious for distinction in so noble a company,
took part, but Achatz Frodnar alone succeeded in
sticking to his horse.

The next stage of the journey was neither hospitable
nor pacific and was indeed fitly symbolised by the
Castle of Schwabisch Hall, which soon aroused the

^ ‘ This glorious town appears in truly majestic splendour . . . the
churches are venerable and superb ; the castle looks down proudly
and finnly ; the citizens’ houses seem to be built for princes ; indeed,
the Kings of Scotland would wish to live like the middle classes of
Nuremberg.’ (.^neas Sylvius.)

^ Hentzner, who journeyed through France and England in 1598,
still found it expedient to be accompanied by bombards. He left
them, indeed, at Calais, but made a great outcry when, on his return
thither from England, they were found to have disappeared.

® * The fiercest fighter of his day (a terrible, hawk-nosed, square-
jawed, lean, ancient man).’ (Carlyle’s PrinzenrauB,)

FREDERICK THE VICTORIOUS 13

pilgrims’ anxious curiosity by its reputation for
sheltering evil spirits who allowed no living man
within its walls. For they were now in the country
oC the Counts of Hohenlohe and there, wirites Tetzel,
' they set upon my lord from every side to overthrow
him.’ Fortunately, each man of the party, 'noble,
gentle and serving,’ carried his crossbow on his saddle,
and the foe soon decided on discretion and withdrew.
The identity of these assailants does not appear, since
the ‘ Jung of Hoenloch ’ himself received the travellers
with great friendliness at Oehringen and forwarded
them on their way with gifts of wild boar, venison
and oats.

Yet their troubles were by no means over, for the
territory of the great Elector Palatine of the Rhine
had soon to be crossed and here they were to meet
with a severe rebuff. Frederick the Victorious was a
prince of ambitions as magnificent as his tastes, and at
this moment they were unluckily at variance with the
hopes and purposes of both the Emperor and the King
of Bohemia. Some four years earlier he had actually
been leagued with George of Podebrad against Imperial
Majesty. But Frederick III. had, with considerable
astuteness, detached the Bohemian from his ally, and
the Palatine had been left in lonely hostility, to build
and christen with mocking defiance the powerful
fortress of Trutzkaiser.^ Naturally enough he cher-
ished a special animosity against his faithless friend
and now, when, after more fierce attacks ‘ before and
behind,’ Podebrad’s emissaries reached Heidelberg,
the Elector wholly declined to have an3rthing to do
with them. Tetzel, indeed, gives no hint of political

^ ‘ From this Mountaine on the South side runne caves under the
Earth, to the Westerne part of the Mountaine of Goates, upon which
Mountaine is a Tower called Trotz-keyser^ as if it were built in
despight of Caesar, and it is worth the seeing, for the antiquity and
building, having no gate, but being entered by the cave under the
earth, and being built with lime tempered, not with water, but wine,
incredibly durable, at the time when the Emperour making i^arre
against the Phaltzgrave, besieged this CityJ (Fynes Morison,)

14 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

complications and provide? an ingenious reason for
this inhospitality. For as they drew near to Heidel-
berg, he tells, they desired to do honour to the
Palsgrave, so hung upon their necks all the jewels
which they could muster, as a si^ that they wished
to tilt for them at his Court. The Palatine, however,
was greatly vexed at this, supposing that it had been
done as a taunt to himself, who had no people worthy
to tilt or tourney with the Bohemians. All Rozmital’s
appeals were therefore in vain, and the only answer
vouchsafed was that Frederick was ‘riding after a
bear, to tilt at it,’ and that when he had achieved this,
he would receive the travellers. ‘Now, this was an
arranged answer: for the Palsgrave was still in the
Castle of Heidelberg. But since he would not admit
us to his presence we must perforce proceed on our
way. And all this happened because my lord and his
retinue had worn the jewels at their necks.’

The Bohemians spent a cheerful Christmas Day at
Frankfort, emptying the great flagons of honour,^
which the burghers, in accordance with their ancient
custom, provided for the modest sum of twelve
fartjhings {nummt) a day. Then, hurrying through an
unfriendly district, they reached Cologne, in time to
celebrate still more jovially the New Year’s Day of
1466. The Archbishop, Rupert of the Palatinate,
showed himself, indeed, a more hospitable host than
his brother at Heidelberg. Once more they tilted and
danced, the prelate himself appearing in the lists ; and
once more they inspected relics, amongst others, the
glorious persons of the Three Holy Kings,® St. Ursula

^ ‘ He to whom wine is given will for sure be acquitted at his inn,’
writes Tetzel. The measure of hospitality extended to travellers
had three recognised degrees of warmth : the sending of necessaries
to the lodging ; the gift of wine, which was held as a token that all
charges would be defrayed; and the invitation to eat at the Court
or Castle*

* ‘ When thes glorious Kyngis and Erchebisschopes were biryed
and leyde togider in her toumbe, thei semyde to the pepil not as deede
bodyes but as men that were aslepe, and thei were better and fairere
coloured than whan thei were alyve.’ (John of Hildesheim.) 0»ly a

RELICS 15

and her eleven thousand virgins with all their legs,
‘et alia complura, capita, capilli, crura et cubiti.’
‘And the priests who showed us the relics affirmed
that with those eleven thousand were thirty-six
thousand others slain.’ To please the Archbishop,
Rozmital himself led off a dance after the fashion of
his country, ‘ eight and forty youths, whereof the half
were hung round with naked weapons and held torches
in their hands, dancing and leaping before him.’ At
the end of the evening the ladies, who were greatly
pleased, gallantly escorted the Lord Lev to his
lodgings.

Aix-la-Chapelle, with warm baths and welcoming
burghers, came next; and here, according to Tetzel,
they had the supreme privilege of seeing not only the
lesser treasures of the famous shrine, but also the Great
Relics presented to Charlemagne by Haroun Alraschid
and exhibited, then as now, only once in every seven
years. These were the four incomparable holinesses
of ‘ Our Lady’s smock,’ worn by her at the time of
the Nativity, ‘ the swaddling clothes wherein Christ
was swaddled,' ‘ the cloth wherein He was wound at
the Crucifixion,’ and ‘the napkin into which John the
Baptist was beheaded.’ It must be confessed, indeed,
that the truthful Schaschek explicitly states that,
despite their most ardent prayers, this privilege was
denied to them. But, even if this were so, there
remained an ample sufficiency of wonders to fill their
souls with awe and amazement : such as the girdle of
our Lord, fashioned of leather with a button of gold,
and the zona of the Blessed Virgin, which was ‘ not

few years before a miracle had happened at the shrine, for just as a
great stone in the roof was about to fall on the sacred bodies, the
whole chapel had stepped ‘ as much as one whole pace aside,* and thus
averted catastrophe. (Pero Tafur.)

^ ‘ There is in the church no stalls, but five-and-thirty double stone
graves, one upon another, made like troughs, and covered over with
stone. . . . There be heads clothed in velvet and satin, set in lockers
orderly, with so many bones, couched likewise in order, that books
stand not fairer in a study, as I ween, two carts would scarcely carry
them.* ( Letter of Roger Ascham, 1551.)

i6 THE BOHEMIAN ULYS§ES

very long or broad, of a white woollen fabric adorned
in the middle by a black stripe, and fastened by a clasp
and a button stuffed with cobbler’s wax.’ Added to
these were the less saintly but most interesting frag-
ments of Charlemagne, including his hunting-horn,
sword, head, leg ^ and diadem as King of the Romans.

The Archbishop of Cologne’s famous nunnery of
Neuss stirred the wanderers’ legitimate enthusiasm,
for here were no fugitive cloistresses chanting faint
hymns to the cold fruitless moon, but a band of siren
sisters gentle and jocund as the heart of man might
wish. ‘ It was in truth a goodly cloister,’ says
Tetzel, ‘and had therein the most all-beautifullest
nuns that ever I saw. And they were all of
noble birth, and they gave us to drink. And the
Mother Superior invited my lord to supper and
prepared for him the most delectable dance in the
cloister. And the nuns were adorned right lovely in
their apparel, and were acquainted with the most
excellent dances, and each had her servant who
served and went before her, and they all lived as they
willed, and I may say that in all my days I have never
seen so many comely women in one cloister.’®

The Bohemians had now to face a more adventurous
region, for the Duchy of Guelderland, owing to the
weakness and treachery of its princes, was in the
toils of a civil war. In the previous spring the young
Duke Adolphus of Egmond, not content with depos-
ing his elderly father, had seized him as he was
getting into bed, had ‘ led him five Dutch miles on
toote bare legged on a marvellous cold night,’ and
had kept him for many months in a deep dungeon,

^ It is curious that Schaschek should mention a leg, for the pride of
Aix was the colossal ‘ arm * of Charles. It has since been discovered
that the arm is a leg, so not remarkable in its dimensions. According
to the Golden Legend Charles was ‘ viii fote longe of his stature, his
face a palme and an halfe longe, his berde a palme longe, hys forhede
a foot large. . . . He wold ete an hare al hole, or two hennys, or an
hole ghoos.’

* For remarkable details concerning the nunneries of Germany, see
the Zimmerische Chronik,

PHILIP THE GOOD

where he saw no light save through a little hole.^
Duke Philip of Burgundy, urged by Pope and Emperor,
had adopted the cause of the victim and, despite the
fact that Duke Arnold had already reigned for some
forty years ® with extravagance and ineptitude, was
now conducting a rather languid war on his behalf*
*So through this district we had a difficult passing,’
say the travellers, ‘for we had to ask for protection
from both sides and it was hard to get.’ But they do
not seem to have been actually much the worse for
the fierce and unfilial condition of affairs, for, although
they found the young Duke in the city of ‘ Guelders
the ancient,’ they record no further details than that
the town was a haunt of disloyal folk and given to
much drinking, while her lord was a man of ‘ no great
body but a little person,’ and possessed the finest
horses to be seen upon this earth.

Leaving this home of disturbance, they entered
prosperous Brabant, with its clean and comely villages.
And so at length to Brussels, as guests of that ‘ great
Duke and mightiest Sovereign,’ Philip the Good.

Here, then, behold Lev and his company in the
heart of the Burgundian dominions, framed in a
setting of wealth and magnificence not to be matched
in the world. Nor, indeed, was its reception at this
famous and prodigal Court a matter of small moment
to an embassy of conciliation. Philip was within two
years of his death and at the apex of his power. His
domains included almost all the Low Countries, then
the richest corner of Europe; and none knew better
than he how to use his possessions to mould a

* This is Commynes’ account, and he is perhaps a prejudiced
witness Duke Arnold was freed after five years’ imprisonment by
Charles the Bold, to whom in gratitude he sold his dominions of
Guelders and Zutphen ; thus excluding his rebellious son and sowing
a fruitful seed of dissension and war.

* When Duke Philip tried to effect a compromise between Duke
Arnold and his son, the latter replied ‘ that he had rather throw his
father headlong into a Well and himselfe after, than agree . . .
alleaging that his father had been Duke forty-fower yeares, and that
it wai? now time for hjm to governe.’ (Commynes-)

i8 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

continent to his will. Kings bowed before him ; East
and West blew into his sails.^ Never had been seen
a land so flowing in wealth, so abounding in the
honours and splendours of life.

It was therefore no meagre satisfaction to the
representative of the upstart Bohemian King that he
was received with the ceremony due to the envoy of
an ancient house. Every day there was brought to
him -wine both white and red in mighty golden cans,
and on the tenth day he was bidden to the Palace
and welcomed with due circumstance. There were
present to greet him a mysterious Duke of Guelders,
whose identity does not appear, the old Duke being
in prison and the young one at war with Burgundy ;
the Great Bastard Anthony, who in the following year
was to fight the famous jousts with the English
Anthony, Lord Scales, and of whom ‘ I trow,’ wrote
John Paston, ‘ God mad never a mor worchepfull
knyt’; and Duke John of Cleves,* nephew of Philip
the Good, commonly called ‘ the child of Ghent.’ And
at the banquet that followed he was in all things as
richly served as Duke Philip himself, even to the
‘ handing of dishes by the mightiest princes and
counts.’ Indeed, it was the all-costliest meal that
Tetzel had eaten in all his days, furnished with
‘costly cupboards overflowing with countless costly
vessels and other objects, incredible to write of,’
besides innumerable costly dishes of food whereof
eight were handed at a time, and an abundant
sufficiency of all the costliest drinks that it was

* ‘ Tous roys de son temps Pont prdfdr^ en tiltre devant eux . . .
Orient et Occident, i la croisure du del, tout souffloit en ses voiles.’
(Chastellain.) ‘ I have travelled the best part of Europe . . . yet saw
1 never countrey in my life of the like greatness, no nor far greater,
abound with such wealth, riches, sumptuous buildings, large ex-
pences, feasts, bankets and all kinde of prodigalitie, as these
countries of Burgundy did, during the time that I was resident there.’
(Commynes.)

’ John of _ Cleves was brought up at the court of his mother’s
brother, Philip of Burgundy. The habits of luxury that he there
acquired greatly annoyed his simple old father, who, whenever he saw
him, would exclaim ironically, ‘ Da kompt Johenneken mit den bellen,’

CHAROLOIS

possible to imagine.^ When the meal was ended,
the guest was taken into the presence of the Duke,
who came the length of three rooms to meet him, led
him by the hand in friendly fashion back to his own
chamber, and engaged him in earnest discourse.

To add a radiance to the visit, the great Earl of
Charolois (Charles the Bold to be) ® came at this time
victoriously home from the first of those many
campaigns wherein — ‘ armed at all peeces and wear-
ing upon his quirace a short cloke marvellous rich ’ —
he combated with varying success the cunning and
strength of France. On this occasion he had been
engaged in the futile enterprise known as the War of
the Public Weal, and had brought it to an end neither
glorious to himself nor especially comfortable to
others. Yet the outward and visible signs of victory
were undoubtedly his. The singular battle of Mont-
Ih^ry had been fought, Paris had submitted, the treaty
of Conflans had been signed, the Burgundian army was
heavy with plunder and Louis XI. was sitting desolate
in a city of mourning and woe. Moreover, on his
homeward way, Charles had reduced the stiffnecked
burgesses of Lifege to an apparent, if fleeting, con-
dition of obedience. So it was in a mood of triumph
that Brussels and her prince were now to meet and
greet one another.

Rozmital had already, on his first entry into
Brabant, offered his services to the conqueror, but
as the campaign was even then at an end they had

^ ‘ Le 30 janvier 1466, le Due estant k Bruxelles, fist faire de creux
[in addition] quatre platz de viande, pour festoyer en son hostel le
seigneur de Rocendale du royaume de Behaigne, et fr^re de la reine
dudict Behaigne, le comte de Zecharowyt et plusieurs autres nobles
gens dudit royaulme de leur compaignie.’ {JUndredre de Philippe le
Bon^ Mimoires InJdits.) TetzePs description of the feast pales before
those written by Olivier de la Marche of the banquets interchanged
by Duke Philip and Duke Adolph of Cleves a few years earlier.

* ‘This duke had only one sonne legitimate, called Charles erle
of Charoloys, a man of suche haute corage, of so high enterprice
and untimerous audacite (even lyke the sonne of Mars) ,as fewe or
none was sene in hys tyme.’ (Commynes.) He was now thirty-three
years old.

20 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

been graciously declined. Now, therefore, he pro-
ceeded with his company, all adorned ‘in the most
magnificentest manner,’ to welcome and escort him.
Accompanied by the town council and the various
guilds of Brussels, each clothed in a different colour-
ing and bearing lighted torches in their hands,^ they
rode forth from the city to the distance of about two
miles. Here they met the army, said by Schaschek
to have amounted at the siege of Li^ge to 150,000
men,® and beheld the ‘troops, chariots, arms and
other engines of war’ of which Charles had been
making so effective an use. The prince was at the
moment engaged in hawking but, when he heard of
the approach of the Bohemians, he quitted his falcons
and hastened with his escort and trumpeters to meet
them. He declined with affability to allow the visitors
to alight from their horses, and they rode all together
into the city, to find the streets lively with ‘sundry
and various games and spectacles ’ and lit with some
thousands of lights. ‘ And thus came the Lord Zarlos
to the Palace and with him nine princes, also my
lord and his company.’

Duke Philip and his headlong, headstrong son were
by no means always on terms of affection or even
politeness. But by good fortune they chanced to have
been lately and thoroughly reconciled,* so the meet-
ing was celebrated under circumstances of joy and
splendour that added greatly to the well-being of the
Bohemians. Nor do their scribes fail in appreciation
of the great occasion, and, brief as are the descriptions,

^ No procession ever took place in Flanders, even by daylight,
without torches — an extravagance that greatly impressed all strangers.

^ Other chroniclers place the figures far lower, but Schaschek no
doubt included in his estimate the whole of the baggage and camp-
followers, who m those days often greatly exceeded the soldiers in
number.

® * He was received by the duke his father with as much joy as
ever father received a son.* (Monstrelet.) They never again
quarrelled, and on the death of Philip a few months later, ‘ the count,
like an affectionate child, never quitted the duke’s bed until he had
given up the ghost.’

FATHER AND SON

thtey grant us brilliant glimpses of the solemn cere-
monials and immeasurable etiquettes with which, in
this majestic Court of Burgundy, even fatherly
affection could not dispense.^

Hand in hand, writes Schaschek, Charles and
Rozmital walked to meet' the Duke. When they
came to the throne, splendid with cloth-of-gold
and blazonry, on which he was seated, they kneeled
down before him; but the old prince bore himself
as though he saw them not. They rose and kneeled
again, and again they were not seen. And this hap-
pened a third time also. Then only did this stately
father suffer himself to become aware of their pre-
sence, rise from his throne, stretch forth his hands,
raise his son and ‘embrace him with tender doings.’
This accomplished, he led them to the inner apart-
ments of the Palace, passing through nine other
rooms, in each of which there were a hundred men-
at-arms keeping guard. ‘ And a certain one narrated
to me (who questioned) : that at no time of the day
or night was there wont to be fewer. If this be the
fact, I can affirm that no Christian King holds so
splendid and magnificent a Court. Certain it is, that
as touching might and riches, he can hold his own
with every other Christian prince. Vast treasures
are at his command ; fourteen dukes and earls
recognise his suzerainty; and the heir of all this
power and wealth is his own legitimate son.’

Soon after, a great joust was held in the presence
of Duke Philip’s sister, the Duchess of Bourbon, and
of a brilliant company. Now, this wa? the Burgundian
manner of tilting: ‘They run together, mounted on
swift and eager coursers, a barrier having been inter-
posed between them ; and they use exceeding slender
spears.® Whoso breaks the greater number of lances

^ Cf. Les Honneurs de la cour, composed by Madame Alienor de
Poitiers for the court of Philip the Good. (Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye.)
Burgundy was the leader of Europe in the i^atter of etiquette.

* At this decadent period lances were made very slight, that they
might break the more easily. (Cf. Jusserand.)

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

obtains the glory of the victory, and the multitude,
cr3dng and acclaiming his name, lead him back to his
lodgings.’ But at so mild an exhibition of prowess
the Lord Jan Serobky Kollebrat^ — a man famous in
tourney — and other of the Bohemians felt no small
contempt ; and they were moved to show their hosts
how such things should be done. A wrestling bout
was accordingly arranged, and several of the
Bohemians, duly though reluctantly clad in tunic
and hose,* ‘ so as not to vex the many maids and
matrons,’ distinguished themselves greatly. The Bur-
gundian champion, who was held to be unrivalled
in the world and received, beside his ordinary wage,
the yearly guerdon of fifty crowns, was three times
overthrown. The success of the gigantic Zehrowitz
was indeed so astounding, that Duke Philip was
fain to feel him all over, ‘limbs, legs, hands and
body,’ to make sure that no methods of magic
had been employed. Schaschek himself, moved by
this brilliant example, now also entered the fray;
but he was not completely victorious, for at his
last bout with the adversary provided for him, ‘ 1
was hurled as violently to the ground,’ he complains,

‘ as though I had been a demoniac yielding up his
devil.’ He was, however, so excellently comforted
by the ladies with wines and sweetmeats, that he
reached his lodgings with great difficulty. He states
the sad fact baldly : ‘ Potus eram, I was drunk.’

On the following day the old Duke, who had once
seen marvellous tilting at Regensburg and wished to
have his memory refreshed, ‘ to pleasure my lord,
allowed him to arrange a joust after the custom of his

^ Hans von Kolowrat auf Zehrowitz.

* * Thorace et caligis.’ Thorax here means a tunic with sleeves
worn on the bare skin or over a shirt, the fonn of which it resembled.
(Cf. Bonnaflfe, and Gay, Dictionnaire archiologique^ ‘ Caliga : an
hoase ; a legge hamesse ; greave or buskin that shouldiours used, full
of nayles in the botom.^ (Cooper.) The Bohemian habit seems to
have been to discard all clothing soever on these occasions. The
chief law of wrestling was then, as now, to forbid all seizure below
the waist (infra cinguluTri).

BOHEMIAN FEATS 23

country without the barrier.’ So Rozmital and Jan
of Zehrowitz ran a course together: ‘and they en-
countered with minds so greatly burning and fiery,
that my lord broke his lance into splinters against his
opponent’s breast. Yet by that blow was neither of
them dislodged from off his horse.’ Moreover, the
said Jan, the further to prove his invincibility, urged
his charger against the wall from which the Duke
and the ladies were looking on, and struck his lance
with such fury against it that his horse ‘ was tumbled
back upon his haunches.’ And hereupon the courtiers
dashed forward and searched him thoroughly to dis-
cover whether he ‘ might in any manner be bound on,
seeing that with so vehement a blow he had not been
plucked from off his horse.’ Then the Bohemian for a
second time spurred his courser and broke his spear
into shivers, with the same result or rather absence
of result ; and this ‘ seemed to the onlookers a great
miracle, for they are not used to running save with a
hedge in between.’ Frodnar and Tetzel also per-
formed marvels of agility, Frodnar finally leaping all
armed from his horse without resting in the stirrups.

When the encounter was at an end, the Duke, who
had a passion for such feats of chivalry, sent for the
arms in which they had tilted and asked whether all
men in their country made use of the like weapons
in such mock warfare, adding: ‘Ye carry them for
play but for us they are a great terror. A traitor
could be no more fiercely punished than by being
condemned to fight such a fight. Verily ye play
with your lives, as though ye did not wish to live.’ ^

^ Butzbach describes the passion of Bohemians for dangerous feats.
Whenever his friends found themselves in the presence of ladies, they
would all, he declares, ^as though mad or raving,’ burst into startling
activity, practising furious courses and the most perilous leaps, swing-
ing their arms and legs over their heads and yelling, Ji^ ju keya
hoy a kossa hossa! and the like. * For it is the custom of the gallants
of that country to address such yellings to their ladies . . . and the
said voice exercises are so frightful to hear, that did any in our
country raise such a din, the entire people would for terror rush to
arms.’

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

For their sole defence against these murderous
implements consisted of breastplates (pectoralia). The
Lord Jan became such a hero among the people that
many repaired daily to the scene of his exploits as
to a shrine, declaring ‘ that he sprang not from that
race of men which now inhabit the earth but from
the progeny of the ancient giants.’

The visitors were also made free of the wonders of
Brussels, visiting first the noble and spacious Com-
munal Palace,^ in the atrium whereof they saw pictures
excelling any that were to be found in any other place
soever. Climbing its lofty tower, ‘ an elegant struc-
ture that reached into the air to a notable height,’ they
surveyed the crowding roofs. Another day they were
shown the great park with its countless birds and
beasts, including a fine collection of live lions. And
at last the marvellous abundance of the Burgundian
treasury* was displayed to them. The chroniclers
expatiate on the amazing richness and splendour of
this assemblage, ‘surpassing by far the treasures of
the Venetians.’ Beside innumerable crucifixes of the
most precious metals there were ‘ twelve little shirts
worth nothing under 40,000 crowns ; item, the hat
which he wears worth 60,000 crowns ; item, an ostrich
feather for his hat, 50,000 crowns’; while of the
smaller jewels there was such a multitude, that had
each one of the company (so skid the treasurer) stared
for three, days they could not have seen them all.*
Lev having been prayed in the name of the Duke

^ ‘One can ride comfortably on horseback throughout the whole
palace ; in the interior are thirty-six fountains, which reach half as
high as the tower.' (Antonio de Beatis.)

^ John Paston describes the wealth of gold, silver, and jewels at the
marriage a year later of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York : ‘ By
my trowthe, I herd nevyr of so gret plente as ther is.’ As for the
Court, ‘ I hert never of non lyek to it, save Kyng Artourys Cort.'

® Cf. Laborde, Les Dues de Bourgogne. Olivier de la Marche
estimates the treasure left at Philip’s death, ‘k deux millions d’or
en meubles seulement, savoir quatre cens mille escus comptants,
soixante-douze mille marcs d’argent en vaisselle, sans les riches
tapisseries, les riches bagues, la vaisselle d’or garnie de pierreries, et
aa librairie moult grande et moult bien ^toff6e.’

LIFE IN BRUSSELS

to accept as a token of love whichsoever trinket he
might chance to prefer, ‘Not to receive gifts came I
hither with my company,’ he replied, ‘ but to exercise
myself in knighthood. Gold and treasure vanish
quickly away, but fame lasteth for ever. This is my
rule of life, which I have hitherto followed and will,
with God’s help, bear with me to my grave.’ In the
stead of jewels, therefore. Lev was invested with the
new Order of the Golden Fleece, already the ambition
of all the princes of Christendom. And, seeing that
Duke Philip had at its foundation limited the number
of its companions to twenty-five and that now the
tale was full, he took the great chain from his own
neck and hung it round that of the Bohemian.^ Many
of Lev’s retinue were also knighted.

Yet it must be confessed that the motives and
methods of the Lord of Rozmital were not invariably
so lofty and illimitable. For, when the moment for
departure arrived, ‘ my lord sent to the Lord Zarlos
a quite handsome horse, in order that a yet better one
might be returned to him. But the Lord Zarlos gave
the servant thirty crowns and sent to Achatz Frodnar
a-costly white palfrey, better than was my lord’s horse.’

Before leaving. Lev returned the hospitality that he
had so bounteously received and entertained the Bur-
gundians to a banquet auf hehemisch, ‘ whereat the
guests abode greatly amazed.’ The ladies danced
‘ and were joyful with my lord,’ and when he wished,
avers the admiring chronicler, he could invite the
greatest ladies alone: ‘for this they allowed him.’
‘ Thus my lord led in all things a joyous and delect-
able life which undoubtedly cost much money. But
the Duke defrayed him in all things.’ Even in earlier
centuries Brussels was renowned for her comforts and

' This incident is given by Horky on the authority of De la Torre,
Mimoires de la Mcdson de MarHnicz (MS. in fol.), and of Cruger’s
Majales TriumpM, p. i6i. Scbaschek does not mention the givmg
of any order at all, and Tetzel only records that the Duke of Cleves
presented Rozmital and tlaee of die party with his GeseUsckaft, pre-
sumably the Cleves ‘ Order of Fools.^

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

delights, and in the reign of Philip the Good there
was certainly no slackening of her gaiety.^

Their leave-taking, again, was ‘ a marvellous spec-
tacle,’ the more that the Duke had prepared for them
a last diversion in the shape of a skating contest,
which to these citizens of Central Europe seemed a
pastime infinitely strange and new.® Looking from
a window of the Palace which gave on to the park
and fishponds, they beheld two-and-thirty of the court
folk gliding with the rapidity of horses over the frozen
surface. Schaschek’s curiosity was aroused to the
uttermost but left unsatisfied. ‘ I was exceedingly
anxious to learn,’ he writes regretfully, ‘what this
thing might be that they wore under their feet,
wherewith they could move so swiftly to and fro on
the ice. I could easily have discovered it had I
ventured to leave my lord’s side.’

Amongst others who were present to bid the
travellers farewell were the three famous Bastards ® of
Burgundy. ‘ In our country they would be called
Spawn [spurii^ But in those regions they are held in
no disgrace, as with us ; for certain kings and princes
have this custom, that their concubines live in their
castles. And to the sons that they bear are lands
given.’ They were served first with meat and drink,
even as though they were the lawful sons of the Duke,
and none might refuse to fight with them. ‘And in
these regions men do not rend one another in pieces
with brawlings and railings, as with us.’

^ ‘Veilloyt de nuyt jusques au jour,* says Jean Maupoint of the
Duke, ‘et faisoit de la nuyt le jour pour veoyr dances, festes et
aultres esbatemens toute la nuyt. Et continua ceste vie et ceste
mani^re jusques k la mort.'

^ Skating was an ancient pastime in the Netherlands, but was not
common in Central Europe till the eighteenth century. (Cf. Schultz.)
In England skating of a kind was popular at a very early date, as is
shown by the well-known description of FitzStephen (a.d. 1174). Yet
in the seventeenth century John Evelyn writes of the ‘new art of
skating’ as performed ‘before their Majesties by divers geiitlemen
in St. James’s Park.’

* The Great Bastard, Anthony; David, who became Bishop of
Utrecht ; and Philip, Lord of Someldick.

CITIES OF FLANDERS

. 27

After eighteen crowded days of glorious Burgundian
life the Bohemians now set their steps for England,
laden with passports from both Philip and Charles,
and escorted by a herald — the last benefit of their
generous host — who spoke seventeen tongues, and
had visited all the kings of Christendom. But they
were not yet through with the marvels of the duchy,
for before them lay two of those prodigious Flemish
cities, whose power and opulence made (and so often
unmade) the strength of their master.^

Of these cities the first was Ghent, which, indeed,
provided nothing more remarkable ^than a square mile
of stately streets, three hundred and more great mills
swung about by the wind, the boasts of the citizens of
being able at need to furnish forth fifty thousand
men-at-arms,® and the wife of Duke Philip, Isabella
of Portugal; amiable, but no longer so comely as
when in her youth she was painted by Jan van Eyck.
Bruges however excited their warmest admiration,
and not without reason. For she was a ‘ marvellous
rich and busy city,’ not now perhaps at the absolute
zenith of her prosperity — since Antwerp had already
risen to rival her — yet still the mart and market
of Europe, the meeting-place for the commerce of
nations. Here were to be seen the wares of the
known world : oranges and lemons from Castile as
fresh as though but newly plucked from the tree ;
wines and fruits from Greece as beautiful as in the
land of their growing; spices and confections from
Alexandria and all the East, ‘ even as though one
were there ’ ; furs from the Black Sea no less goodly
and thick than on the shores whence they came.
Here was all Italy with its brocades, its silken stuffs
and its armours.® * There is no corner of the earth

^ ‘ In magnis et opulentis Flandriae civitatibns status sui (ducis
Bturgundise) robur contmetur,’ wrote iEneas Sylvius.

* ‘ Ji soit ce qu’en Gand il y ait multitude innombrable de peupie,
et que le fait de la ville pour sa grandeur est moult dur ^ connoitre.
(Chastellam.) ‘ In circuit, three times the size of Naples.’ (Beads.)

* Pero Tafur.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

whose fruits are not to be found here at their best.’
Still, too, the travellers could tell of the 525 bridges
that spanned the crowded network of her canals.^
The great ‘ Pastor ’ (Bastard) was their lavish host,
and they ‘led a passing pleasant and worldly life.’

For Bruges was also famous for her festivities, and
this, as luck would have it, was the genial time of the
Bacchanalia or Carnival, when all men, down to the
most stately and sober, rejoiced. Even the highest
nobles went about in masks and fantastic disguisings.
‘ And in this matter all strive to be the most bravely
adorned ; and of what colour soever the master makes
show, in the same colours are his servants set forth.’
Then was much dancing and playing, with beating of
drums and sounding of trumpets. Nor was this all ;
for, if any one chanced upon his sweetheart (amicam
suam) a-walking, he forthwith showed her a scroll
with his name betrayed thereon, and, although he
might speak no further word, he was permitted to
pass the evening in her company * with dancing, with
various kinds of games and with ‘ risking sundry
golden crowns, each according to his means.’ In
truth, life was merry in Flemish cities, for — unlike
the English ® — ‘ the nobles and such as are born of
illustrious race dwell, not in the country, but in the
towns, and hence have they manifold diversions and

* ‘Over these [little rivers] are many beautiful bridges of stone and
■wood, such that in all Europe there are none better nor more in-
genious ; and it is for their excellence that the city is called Bruges,
or Brujas de Bruggas, which in Flemish signifies bridge.’ (Calvete.)

* ‘ Any man,’ writes Pero Tafur, ‘ may invite a lady to spend the
night with him, on condition that he neither seeks to see her &ce nor
to know her name ; whoso does this, forfeits life.’

’ ‘ Yf we wyl restore our cytes to such bewty as we see in other
cuntreys . . . our gentylmen must be causyd ... to byld them housys
in the same, and ther to see the governance of them, helpyng ever to
set al such thyng forward as perteynyth to the omamentys of the
cyte. . . . Thys ys a gret rudenes and a barbarouse custume usyd
■wyth us in our cuntrey. They dwel wyth us sparkylyd in the feldys
and woodys, as they dyd before ther was any cyvyle lyfe knowen, or
stablyschyd among os : the wych surely ys a grete ground of the lake
of al cyvyle ordur and humanyte.’ (Starkey.)

ENGLAND

delights.’ And, although the Bohemians failed to
induce the prudent burghers to run or tilt with them,
they were amply compensated for this disappointment
by the curious joys of the brUckischen Bad^ whereof
wonders might be written, says Tetzel, though he
discreetly refrains from writing them.

The travellers resumed their journey on Ash
Wednesday and were soon in Calais, where prudence
induced Lev to dismiss the half of his horses and
retinue.

Ill

This, Shakespeare notwithstanding, was the Bohemians’
first sight of the sea, and its flowing and blowing
horrors filled their stomachs with qualms and their
souls with quaking.

And, indeed, for a first experience theirs was no
happy one. The winds were so contrary that they
were forced to linger in Calais for a fortnight, facing
both the strange and threatening element and those
peculiar charms of England’s great outpost, which
Eustache Deschamps has painted with so pathetic a
brush.® Nor, when at last they quitted the friendly
shore, was their temerity rewarded, for no sooner had
they emerged on to the narrow seas, than the vessel
was found to have sujRfered so dismal a damage ‘ that
the horses were standing in water to their bellies,’ and,
had the wind not changed, all had undoubtedly been
drowned. They put back to Calais, chartered a new
ship and, after a succession of further perils disturb-

^ See Illustrative Notes, 3.

* Puces sentir, oyr enfans cner . . .

Et, d'autre part, oir la grant mer bruir
Et les chevaulx combatre et deslier. . . .

He was apparently not so experienced a traveller as the Jerusalem,
pilgrim who, with regard to the first drawback, wrote : ‘ Pour les
yvrer ou faire immobilles, soies soubtilz et bien abilles d^avoir canchar
celle herbe en vostre lit, et ga et Ik en sera assez ; point ne fouldra
CPUrir apr^s.’ {Le Grant Voyage de

30 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

ing to such unaccustomed sailors, approached the
shores of England. ‘ And the sea suited my lord and
his comrades so ill,’ groans Tetzel, ' that they lay in
the ship as though they were dead.’ ^

As they drew near to the cliffs ‘we beheld,’ they
declare rather baldly, 'tall mountains full of chalk,
which verily needed no more burning. And from afar
these mountains seem as though hidden by snow.’
Near by they saw the Castle of Dover, builded by
evil spirits (a cacodaemonibus) and so strongly fur-
nished and fortified that in no province of Christendom
was it possible to invent the like. They came ashore
at the town of Sandwich : ‘ the which lying near to the
sea, many countries can visit it with their ships,’ says
Tetzel. As a fact, Sandwich was still one of the
busiest and most thriving ports of England, though
for over two hundred years she had been the victim
both of her great neighbour France and of that most
elusive of foes, a retreating sea; and her doom was
even now closely upon her.

Here, too, they found a portion of the English fleet—
a matter assuredly of no small excitement to men new-
lighted from the recesses of a continent, to whom the
ocean and all his works were things of immeasurable
surprise. Yet they show little more than a polite and
slightly pedagogic interest. ‘ Here we first saw sea-
going vessels,’ they say; ‘great ships, galleons and
cog;s.® That is called a great ship which is driven by
winds and sails alone. A galleon is that which is
urged along by oars : of these there were some that had
above two hundred rowers. This kind of vessel sur-
passes all others in greatness and in length, seeing
that it is able to navigate both with favourable and
with adverse winds. It is above all used in battles
of the sea, since it is able to hold some hundreds

^ See Illustrative Notes, 4.

* ‘ Naves, galeones et cochas.* Cogs were primarily ships of trans-
port. Cf. Malory : ‘ A greate multitude of shyppes, galeyes, cogges
and dromoundes, sayllynge on the see.’

THE ENGLISH FLEET 31

of men together. The third kind is the cog, as it
is called, which is middling big.’ It must be admitted
that the Royal Navy of England was at this time not
only in its infancy but in a particularly feeble phase
of its infancy, the ineptitude of Henry VI. having more
than cancelled the hard-won glories of his father.
The unwieldy and often unready Grace Dieu and two
or three big carracks and galleys now formed the
puny defence of the little island, and the sole point on
which she could still pride herself was her power,
unique among northern nations, of dispensing with
the help of mercenaries. The Bohemians, therefore,
show discrimination in devoting the greater part of
their praise to the sailors themselves. ‘ Truly nothing
is more amazing than to see the shipmen surmounting
misfortune, foretelling the approach and direction of
the winds, and knowing beforehand whether to spread
the sails or partially to furl them. Amongst these, I
saw one sailor so nimble that hardly might any other
be compared with him.’^

It was the distressing custom of Sandwich to
perambulate the town the whole night through
with fifes and trumpets,^ crying aloud and pro-
claiming whatever wind might be at the moment
blowing : ‘ and such merchants as would depart,
when they hear the cry — if so be that the wind
which is announced to blow be favourable to them
— go down into their ships and direct their course
homewards.’

From Sandwich the party reached Canterbury and
gazed, with the proper reverence of pilgrims, at the
world-famous minster and shrine, which by so ‘ many
kings, princes, opulent merchants, and other pious men
is gloriously maintained.’ The Cathedral itself they
declare to be of a beauty not to be foimd in all
Christendom, ‘ and in this all pilgrims agree.’ It was

* See Illustrative Notes, 5.

* ‘Fidicmibus et tubicinibus.’

32 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

roofed above with tin ^ and so constructed in three
storeys, that it seemed as though three churches had
been built, one upon another. But it was the sepulchre
of Thomas a Becket that drew their most eager
admiration. ‘ Here lies the coffin of the dear lord
St. Thomas. In its least part of gold, it is so long
and wide that a middling big man might lie therein.
And it is so costly adorned with pearls and precious
stones that it is said there is no more splendid coffin
in all Christendom, nor do so great miracles happen
elsewhere as there.’ Above all other jewels in beauty
and value was the great Regall of France, a marvellous
gem * which is wont to blaze in the night and is half
the size of a hen’s egg.’ * It had sprung into its place
by a miracle. ‘ Once on a time a King of France
[Louis VII.] made a vow on a field of battle. And he
conquered his enemies, and came to this minster and
knelt before this coffin and said a prayer ; and he had
a ring on his hand, wherein was a costly stone. Then
did the Bishop thereof ask the King to give this stone
and this ring to the shrine. But the King said that he
loved the stone too dearly, and that he had further-
more a great belief that whatsoever he undertook
while the ring was on his hand would not miscarry ;
yet that the shrine might be the better adorned, he
would give a hundred thousand florins. The Bishop
was glad and thanked the King. But .when the stone

^ The word used is stannum^ which in Pliny’s days meant a com-
pounded metal, but since the fourth century has been the common
designation of tin. It does not appear that lead is meant, as a little
later Schaschek speaks of roofs of both lead and tin : j>luinho et
stanno. According to Beckmann there is little doubt that the stannea
tecta^ or roof of the church at Agen in Guienne, described by the
ecclesiastical poet Fortunatus in the sixth century, consisted of tinned
plates of copper. Was this perhaps the same ?

® The magnificence of the shrine, says the Relation of Englandy
surpasses all belief.’ Though wholly covered with plates of pure
gold, these were almost hidden by precious stones ; ‘ and on every
side that the eye turns something more beautiful than the other
appears.’ But everything was left far behind by a ruby not larger
than a man’s thumb-nail : though the church was dark and the day
eloudy, ‘ yet I saw that rpby as wf J1 as if I had it in my hand,’

THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS 33

heard the denial, it leaped forthwith out of the ring and
fastened itself into the middle of the coffin, even as
though a goldsmith had set it there. And when the
King saw this miracle he prayed the dear lord St.
Thomas and the Bishop to forgive him his sin, and he
gave both the ring and the florins to the shrine. No
one can tell what stone it is.^ It hath a clear glistering
shine and bums like a flame, and no countenance can
bear to behold it so near as to see its colour.’ Of
so marvellous a value was it that ‘ were a King of
England taken prisoner, he might be therewith
ransomed, for it is worth more than the whole of
England together.’

The embassy next looked with reverence upon the
many wonder-working relics of the martyr: upon
the saintly ‘ head,® brains and tonsure,’ with the
guilty sword whereby they were cleft and stirred ; ®
upon the coarse and knotty shirt that had galled the
holy body ; upon the famous fountain which had five
times changed for Thomas’s benefit, now into blood
and now into milk ; and upon the column in the Chapel
of the Virgin where h« ‘ had been seen and heard by
many’ conversing with the Blessed Lady. Of other
saints, too, they saw innumerable fragments, including
an image of the Virgin, adorned with a crown of
pearls and precious stones and valued at a great
price.^ In our tongue, ends Gabriel ingenuously, ‘ the

^ Schaschek* calls it a carbuncle. ‘ Whether a carbuncle (which is
esteemed the best and biggest of rubies) doth flame in the dark or
shine like a coal in the night, though generally agreed on by common
believers, is very much questioned by many.^ (Sir Thomas Browne.)

* This was probably the silver-covered head commonly shown to
visitors. ‘ They found his head,’ writes Wriothesley, ‘ hole with the
bones, which had a wounde in the skull, for the monkes had closed
another skull in silver richly, for people to offer to, which they sayd
was St. Thomas skull, so that nowe the abuse was openly knowe that
they had used many yeres afore.’ [Chronicle for year 1 538.)

* ‘And whan he was deed they styred hys brayne.’ [Golden
Legend^

* Erasmus describes the statue of the Virgin as ‘incomparably
burdened with riches,’ ‘ a more than royal spectacle,’ and only shOwn
to men of high rank. (Colloquy on Pilgrimage^

u the bohemian ULYSSES

saint is known as Thomas of Kandelberg, but here as
Thomas of Canterbury.’

From the grey old city of pilgrimages they rode
through cheerful Kent — past Rochester, where they
slept, and over high old robbing Gadshill— to the
capital ‘ which is named Lund.’ This was ‘ a mighty
busy town,’ says Tetzel (and a burgher of fifteenth-
century Nttremberg who had sojourned in Bruges and
Ghent should be no mean judge), wherein was great
trafficking with all nations ; also much people and
many craftsmen, chiefly goldsmiths and clothworkers,
and very beautiful women ^ dear in price. ‘ An ample
and magnificent town,’ supplements Schaschek,
possessing two citadels, in one of which, situated at
an end of the city and ‘ washed by an arm of the sea,’
the English King held his court. Spanning this arm
(‘ otherwise called the Thames river ’) was that
constant theme of all visitors, old London Bridge * :
‘ a long bridge of stone upon which throughout its
whole length have houses been built.’ And nowhere
had he seen so great a number of kites® (jnilvi) as
here, seeing that to injure them was a capital crime.

The King who was said to be dwelling in the sea-
washed citadel of Westminster was Edward IV ; for
that ‘goodliest gentleman and beautifullest prince’

^ ‘ Qui veult belle dame acquerre, Preigne visage d^Engleterre/
quoted the English herald in the famous debate. And it was the
one point on which the French champion could not contradict him.
{Ddbat des Hiraulx,) ‘Our women questionlesse are the most
choice workes of nature, adorned with all beauteous perfection, with-
out the addition of adulterat sophistications.’ (Heyljm.)

® ‘ There is suche a brydge of pulcritudnes, that in all the worlde
there i$ none lyke.’ (Boorde.) ‘ Among all the straunge and beautiful
showes, mee thinketh there is none so noteable as the Bridge . . .
which is in manner of a continuall streete, well replenyshed with large
and stately houses on both sides, and situate upon twentie arches/
(Lyly’s Euphues and his England)

^ The English, says the RelaUon of England^ do not dislike ‘ what
we so much abominate ’ — crows and kites : ‘ there is even a penalty
attached to destroying them, as they say that they keep the streets of
the towns free from all filth.’ Indeed, the kites ‘ are so tame, that
they often take out of the hands of little children the bread smeared,
with butter, in the Flemish fashion, given to them by their mothers.’

EDWARD IV

was at this time picnicking in temporary security on
the disputed throne of England. Indeed, this early
spring of 1466 was one of the brightest periods of
Edward’s uneasy career, a happy island in the
stormy waste of blood named with so poignant an
irony the Wars of the Roses. The victories of Towton
and Hexham were past and the disasters of 1470 were
yet to come. He had defeated and captured his rival
Henry. He had driven Margaret, the She-Wolf of
France, out of the kingdom. He had married the
beguiling widow of his desires. And, not least, he had
been able, through the dominant influence of his wife’s
newly promoted kinsmen, to swing his council and his
country to his will. Moreover, owing to the apposite
occurrence of the war between Burgundy and France,
he could afford to disregard alike the protests of
Louis XI. and the anger of that other great prota-
gonist : Warwick, maker and breaker of kings.

Edward did not, however, wholly neglect the opinion
of Europe, and so soon as he heard of the arrival of
the Bohemians — moved not improbably by the fact
of their recent sojourn at the Burgundian court — he
ordered a splendid lodging to be prepared, and sent
a herald and a councillor to meet them. A few days
later he summoned the Lord of Rozmital to the
Palace ^ : ‘ and then we saw the singular great rever-
ence that his servants show unto him, and how even
mighty lords must kneel before him.’ To his visitors,
however, he affably gave his hand ; and, when Rozmital
had expounded the whither and wherefore of the
journey, he ‘took a great pleasure therein and bore
himself right friendly with my master.’ They found
him ‘ a passing comely upright man,’ ® with the come-
liest household to be seen in all Christendom.

^ The passports given to Rozmital by Edward are dated ‘ in palatio
nostro Vestmonasteriu’

* ‘ King Edward was a man of no great forecast/ writes Commynes,
‘but verie valiant, and the beautifullest pnnce that lived in his
time.^ And again : ‘ The goodliest gentleman that ever I set mine
eie on. . . . He feared no man, but fed himselfe marvellous fat,’

36 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Now began a time of much dissipation for Rozmital
and his retinue. First they were invited by the King
to a splendid dinner of fifty courses, ‘ as is their
custom,’ and at the end of it each member of the
company was invested by the royal hand with ‘ his
Symbol or Order ’ : ^ * whoso was knight received a
golden one and whoso was not knight a silver one,
and he placed them himself on our necks. And on
some he bestowed sundry of his orders to give
away.’ Certain of the party also received the
dignity of knighthood. But this attention aroused,
it would seem, no enthusiasm, for though Edward,
being in a mellow and munificent mood, ‘wished
for more to thwack,’ and though the Lord Lev ‘ like-
wise would gladly have seen it ’ : yet ‘ they would
not’ — misliking perhaps, stern fighters as they were,
to be dubbed with unhacked rapier and on carpet
consideration.

A still more imposing ceremony awaited the embassy
in the churching of the Queen, for the fascinating
Woodville had just brought into the world the smaller
Elizabeth, who was later, by her marriage with
Henry VII., to graft together the rival Roses and
produce that ‘ indubitate flower and very heire of both
the said lineages,’® Henry VIII. It was a proud
occasion for the ambitious lady. ‘ The Queen,’ writes
Tetzel, ‘went that morning from childbed to church
with a fine procession.’ First marched the priesthood
bearing relics, and many scholars singing and carrying
lights ablaze. After them went a goodly band of
ladies and damsels from city and country, and after
these again a crowd of trumpeters, pipers and players
of stringed instruments, together with ‘ the King’s
singers, even two and forty of them, who were of

^ This was certainly not the Order of the Garter, and can hardly
have been the Order of the Bath, although this is suggested by
Schultz and Horky. Every potentate, however small, seems at this
period to have had a special ‘ con^panionship ’ or order which he
distributed as he chose,

® Cf. the title-page of HalPs Chronicle^ ed. of 1 548.

THE KING-MAKER

exceeding excellence in song.’ Next appeared four-
and-twenty heralds and pursuivants, followed by sixty
lords and knights. And so at last the Queen under
her canopy, led by two dukes and escorted by her
mother and her own ladies to the number of sixty.
Having heard an Office sung, she returned in the
same manner from the Abbey to her Palace of West-
minster. ‘ There must all bide and eat who did
walk in the procession. And they sat them down,
womenfolk and menfolk, ghostly and worldly, each
after his standing, and four great halls were full.’

The laws of etiquette had banished the King from
this feast, but his place was well filled by a certain
'mightiest Earl,’ who must undoubtedly have been
that ‘plus soubtil homme de son vivant,’ the secret
and unscrupulous Warwick, enjoying his last halcyon
days of prosperity and favour at the Yorkist court.
For the hidden marriage of Edward at the very
moment that Warwick was betrothing him to Bona of
Savoy, coupled to the swift elevation of the new
Queen’s family, had sorely tried the King-Maker’s
unstable loyalty to his first puppet. He had swal-
lowed his anger and played his part suitably at the'
enthronement of Elizabeth in Reading Abbey in the
September of 1464. And now at the birth of her
eldest child ^ he had gallantly accepted the post of
godfather. But a very few weeks later the substi-
tution of Lord Rivers, the Queen’s father, for Lord
Mountjoy, his own kinsman, as Treasurer of England

* Fabyan tells a pleasant anecdote concerning the birth of the little
Princess, ‘whose Christenynge was doone in the abbaye with most
solempnyte ; and the more, bycause the Kynge was assuryd of his
phisycions that the queue was conceyved with a prynce ; and specially
of one named Maister Domynyk, by whose counsayll great provycion
was ordeyned for Christenynge of the sayde prynce. Wherefore it
was after tolde, that this Maister Domynyk . . . stode in the second
chamber where the quene travayled, that he myght be the firste that
shuldebrynge tydynges to the Kynge of the byrthe of the prynce ; and
lastly when he harde the childe crye, he knockyd or called secretly at
the chamber dore, and ftayned what the quene had. To whom it
was answered by one of the ladyes, what so ever the queue’s grace
hath here wythin, suer it is that a fcde standithe there withoute/

38 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

inaugurated that winter of discontent that was to
culminate in the triumph of the Nevilles in 1469.

For the moment, however, the sun still shone, and
the Bohemians basked in it, being treated with all
honour and respect by the great schemer at the royal
board. ‘ And the King’s mightiest Earl did sit at the
King’s table in the King’s stead. And my lord did sit
at the self-same table about two steps removed from
him, and otherwise was no one seated at the table.
And all the honour that should have been paid to the
King, as of carving and tasting and the serving of
meats, in like measure as though the King were him-
self there seated was paid to the Earl in the King’s
stead ; and they did so handsomely by my lord, that it
is not to be believed how much was spent’ While
they were eating, the royal gifts were distributed
among the trumpeters, pipers, musicians and heralds,
the heralds alone receiving 400 nobles. ‘ And all who
had been rewarded went hither and thither about the
table and cried aloud what the King had given unto
them.’

When the meal was at an end, Warwick led
Rozmital and his suite into another hall ‘ marvellously
decked and garnished ’ where the Queen was now to
have her repast, and placed them in a little corner
whence they could watch ‘ the great splendour of her
eating.’ Now, if the English chroniclers are to be
believed, Elizabeth was wont to draw every eye and
ravish every heart by her lovely-looking, her feminine
smiling — ‘neither too wanton nor too humble’ — her
eloquent tongue and her pregnant wit.^ But to the
Bohemians none of these charms seem to have been
apparent, and they dwell only on the stateliness of
her pride and the solemnity of her silence. For this
new-fledged Queen sat alone at her table in a priceless
golden chair. Even her mother and the King’s sisters
stood far below, and, if she deigned to speak with
them, ‘ so kneeled they all the while before her, even
^ Hall’s Chronicle,

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE 39

until the Queen took water.’ It was not till the first
dish was set before Elizabeth that they were allowed
to sit, while the other ladies and all those in waiting,

‘ were they the mightiest nobles,’ must yet, so long as
she was eating, kneel. ‘ And she ate for three hours
and many costly meats, whereof it would take too
long to write. And all were silent : not a word was
spoken.^ And my lord with his company stood ever
in his corner and looked on.’

. Nor, even when the portentous meal was over, did
Elizabeth unbend, for at the dance that followed she
remained seated on her golden throne, while her mother
kneeled before her, only standing up at intervals.
As for the princesses, they danced with two dukes ‘ in
the most delectable dances, proffering to the Queen
the most delectable curtseys such as I have never seen
elsewhere. So also did many maids of above measure
marvellous beauty, among whom were eight duchesses
and about thirty countesses ; and the others were all
daughters of high lineage. And after the dance came
the King’s choristers and sang.’ One of these graceful
dancers was that Margaret of York, ‘a lady of excel-
lent beautie and yet more of womanhode than of
beautie and more of vertue than womanhode,’* who
by her marriage a year later to the newly widowed
Charles of Burgundy hastened the Warwick crisis.
The second dancer was probably the sister next to
Iier in age, Anne Duchess of Exeter ; while the lady
who now kneeled so humbly before her daughter was
Jacqueline of Luxemburg, Duchess of Bedford.*

More hospitality on apparently as royal a scale was
to follow. F or the visitors were soon after entertained

^ See Illustrative Notes, 6.

^ Hall. The same chronicler, however, alludes to her later as
‘that pesteferous serpent, lady Margaret Duchess of Burgoyne/
whose ‘ craftie invencion and develishe ymaginacion was ever
sowing sedition and rebellion against the King of England.*

3 ‘When the royal spowsayles were solempnyzed , . . was no
persones present but the spowse, the spowsesse, the Duches of
Bedford her moder, the preest, two gentylwomen, and a yong man
to helpe the preest sing.* (Fabyan.)

40 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

by two Earls — one of whom may again have been the
King-Maker in that hospitable house in Warwick Lane,
where were often six oxen eaten at a breakfast^ — to
‘unspeakably splendid meals’ of sixty dishes, served
in mansions made beautiful by ' carpets of exceeding
preciousness.’ In return. Lev invited many of the
English nobles to his house, and treated them after the
Bohemian fashion : whereat, like the Burgundians,
‘ they were rarely amazed.’ The lusty Bohemians
also wished to arrange courses and tiltings in which
to display their prowess. But the King would have
none of them, so, with a rather ironical generosity,
they presented him with all their tourney horses,
accoutrements and furnitures.

Yet, despite all their feastings, they neglected
neither the more pious objects of their joumeyings
nor, as they take pains to record, the improvement of
their minds. They visited the birthplace of the holy
Thomas (now the Mercers’ Chapel), with the tombs
of his mother and sister ; and the ‘ golden, ample and
gem-strewn’ shrine of Saint Keuhardus (presumably
IQng Edward the Confessor), than the chasing of
which ‘ I have never seen aught more exquisite or
more elegant.’ ® Many other churches, too, they saw,
‘so surpassing in their loveliness’ that they could
not in any sort be bettered ; while as for the priceless
relics which everywhere met their eyes, it would take
two scribes for two whole weeks (laments Schaschek)
to describe them. Amongst others were four especi-
ally comfortable to their hearts : a girdle of Our
Lady,® a leg of St. George, one of the vessels wherein
water turned to wine at the marriage of Cana, and

^ Cf. Holinshcd,

® This shrine was ‘placed on high like a candle upon a candle-
stick, so that all who enter into the House of the Lord may behold its
light,* says the Liber ^ Trinitatis. * Neither St. Martin of TourS^ a
church in France, which I have heard is one of the richest in exist-
ence, nor anything else that I have cvfer seen, can be put into any
sort of comparison with it.’ {A Relation of England^)

® ‘Our Ladies girdell at Westminster, whic£ weomen with chield
were wonte to girde with.’ (Wriothesley’s Chronicled)

LONDON

the stone whereon Christ first placed His foot on
issuing from the holy sepulchre, still bearing the
print of the sacred step. Moreover, eight miles
from London there was a crucifix that talked with
men : ^ ‘it is affirmed for certain.’

The travellers were next shown many of those ‘ most
admirable gardens’ which were once the glory of
London and the theme of Bacon’s famous essay.® In
two of them many divers sorts of animals were pre-
served, and in all there grew various trees and herbs,
unknown in other lands. They were also taken to
see the Tower and its prodigious treasury,® of which,
in their eyes, the most remarkable feature was a
romantic golden cup worthy of the King of Thule. So
long as this goblet was preserved in safety a sum of
eighty thousand rose-nobles was paid yearly to the
sovereign by a certain mysterious province —
quadam regione — but should the cup be lost, this
tribute would instantly cease. Neither was it ever
to be exhibited save to visitors from foreign lands.

But this was a mere drop in the amazing ocean of
England’s opulence: ‘for verily the kingdom is sur-
passingly rich in gold and silver.’* Countless nobles
{nablt)'^ and ‘other good moneys’ were constantly
being coined, while in London alone there were twenty
golden sepulchres adorned with precious stones, and
in the rest of the kingdom about fourscore ‘ builded of
gold and set forth with jewels.’ Mighty, too, was the

* Perhaps the ‘ ungpratious Roode of Grace ’ at Boxley, which ‘ in
straunge motion . . . and nimblenes of joints, passed al other.’ It
could bow down, shake hands, feet and head, ‘ rolle the eies, wag the
chaps, bende the browes . . . bytmg the lippe and gathering a frown-
ing, froward and disdainful face,’ or * shewing a most milde, amyable and
smyling cheere and countenaunce.’ (Lambarde’s Kent.) Schaschelds
Mtlliaria were presumably German miles, equivalent to rather more
than four and a half miles English.

* See Illustrative Notes, 7.

* ‘ Said to exceed the anciently famed wealth of Croesus and
Midas, so vast a quantity of gold and silver is treasured.’ (Nucius.)

* See Illustrative Notes, 8.

® ‘ In the year 1465 King Edward IV. caused a new coin both of
gold and silver to be made, whereby he gained much.’ (Stow.)

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

multitude of the goldsmiths, there being as many as
‘four hundred of the master craftsmen alone, not
counting the apprentices. And amongst them not a
man of them all is idle, the vastness and richness of
the city supplying them in sufficieilt abundance with
the occasion for labour.’

England seems also to have impressed the visitors as
a musical nation. They tell of choirs formed of no
less than sixty singers, and never in any place, they
agree, ‘have we heard musicians so sweet and so
jocund.’ In the King’s Chapel, especially, they listened
enraptured and decided ‘that there are no better
singers in the world.’ ^

Nor do the Bohemians forget to notice the curious
habits and fashions of the natives. ‘ It is the custom
in this town,’ says Schaschek, ‘when illustrious
guests come hither from foreign countries, that maids
and matrons should flock to their lodging and receive
them, bringing them gifts withal. The which also was
done to us.’ Then, anticipating the famous words of
Erasmus some forty years later, he reveals that national
prerogative which lent so amiable a glamour to English
travel in the days of the Renaissance ; ‘And this custom
also is here observed, that at the first arrival of guests
in any lodging the hostess with all her household
comes forth into the street to receive them ; and each
one of them it behoves each ohe to kiss. Indeed,
to them, to take a kiss is but as, to others, to offer
the right hand; for they are not used to offer the
hand,’ ^

And if Bohemia was surprised by the customs of
London, London was no less astonished by the
peculiarities of Bohemia. The singular appearance of
these strangers from the country so ‘ancient, desert
and remote’ greatly impressed the citizens. ‘The
long hair of our heads was a thing of much admiration
to them, for they declared they had never seen any
that surpassed our hairs for length and comeliness.

* See 'Illustrative Notes, * jpdd.^ lo.

HORTULUS ANGLIiE

And in no way could they be led to believe that they
grew thus by nature, but rather declared them to be
glued on with bitumen. And did but one of us present
himself thus long-locked to view, so had he many spec-
tators, even as though some marvellous beast had been
produced.’ Nor, perhaps, was this interest on the
part of the untravelled islanders much to be wondered
at, since the hair-dressing of Bohemia seems to have
been remarkable, even in those ornate days, for its gay
and fantastical character. Many are the comments of
contemporaries upon the gallant Bohemian heads of
the fifteenth century. ‘ I have often,’ writes Butzbach,
with the enthusiasm of an Apuleius or a Firenzuola,
‘ seen men with their hair curiously crisped and falling
to the girdle, and women with whom it reaches smooth
and shining to the calf or ankle.’ Even dignitaries of
the highest rank wore their hair ‘ tufted together with
linen and many-coloured silken bands,’ or ‘ sparsed into
long thin braids ’ ; while the youthful dandies made
marvellous outlay of ribands and fillets, interlaced with
nets and knots of silk and gold. ‘ They inspect them-
selves frequently therewith,’ adds the wandering scholar
sardbnically, ‘ and imagine they are somebody.’ ^

On their departure from the city the travellers
were placed in the charge of a guide, who was to lead
them ‘ through and about England to see the kingdom.’
As a matter of fact, their researches seem to have taken
them no farther than to Salisbury and Poole, and it
was from this fragment of the country — helped perhajfe
by hearsay— that they judged the whole. Their first
thought was that England was very little, very narrow
and very long ; even, says Schaschek, again suggesting
a famous phrase, ‘ like a small garden \hortulus\ girt
and girdled by the sea.’ Yet it abounded in towns,

^ But the English also were no mean performers in the art.

I knyt yt up all the nyght

And the day time kemb it down ryght,

And then yt cryspeth and shyneth as bryght
« As any purUd gold,

says an old ballad.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

villages, castles, cloisters and churches. Indeed,
sacred buildings were to be found in greater beauty
and abundance in England than anywhere else in the
world. Moreover, ‘ albeit the country is not remark-
able for exceeding size, it is singularly crowded with
people,^ whilst the shape of the women and maidens
thereof is excellently fertile, the which, when my lord
was bidden to eat with the King, we could well
discover.’

The landscape they describe as hilly and thick with
woods, though these were not the familiar black fir
and pine forests of Central Europe. Some of the
woods produced ‘ a certain tree from which if an image
be carved and buried in the earth, in the space of a
year it is changed into stone. These forests are thirty
miles distant from London.’ * Many great parks there
were also, where rare animals were ‘ preserved from
all dangers,’ and many great heaths, commons, thickets
and reeds. Everywhere that the eye could turn were
vast flocks of sheep to be seen, a few black specimens
appearing among a multitude of the colour of snow.
These could, winter and summer alike, find their
nourishment on the said heaths, and in them lay (as
England’s poor knew to their cost) the greatest profit
that could be drawn from the land, their wool being
freely exported to other countries.® Wolves, on the
other hand, England did not cherish, and if any were
iijtroduced ‘ they would forthwith die.’ *• Other

^ ‘ Other countries are not in such a happy situation, and not so
well stored with inhabitants.' (Sir John Fortescue.)

® * In dyvers places in England there is wood the which doth tume
into stone.’ (Boorde.)

* See Illustrative Notes, ii.

* ‘ It was a tradition of old writers that England bred no wolves,
neither would they live here ; which report is not consentaneous to
truth.’ (Peter Heylyn.) * Quelques Autheurs ont ^crit de la retraite
des derniers assez diversement : Les uns en attribuent la cause a
une propriety secrete, et k une antipathic naturelle : Les autres
nient cette quality occulte, et disent qu’autrefois ceux qui estoient
cottdamnez k I’exil, ne pouvoient revenir de leur banissement,
qu’aprfes avoir apporte un certain nombre de testes et de langues de
Loups qu’ils avoient tuez, et que par le moyen de cette Chasse le Pais
fut nettoyd.’ (Payen.)

AN OUTRAGEOUS PEOPLE 45

sources of wealth were the silver, copper, tin and lead
which were digged from the earth by the natives. But
of wine, corn and wood there was not much more to be
found than what was brought from over the sea. The
common people drank a liquor called ‘Al’selpir’
(ale-beer?),^ and for fuel they burned the heath. Every
wood was surrounded by a ditch, and in like manner
the peasants placed ditches round their fields and
meadows and so hedged them in, that neither on foot
nor on horseback was any one able to traverse the
country save by the high-road. Horses were the sole
means of transport both for persons and for packages,
there being no chariots or vehicles of any kind ex-
cepting certain carts or wains with two heavy wheels
which were occasionally used for the carriage of goods.
As for the dress of the islanders, there was nothing
remarkable about it, save that the women dragged
long trains after them : ‘ in no country have I seen any
so long.’ *

Concerning the character of Englishmen the
Bohemians are not enthusiastic. Schaschek, in fact,
declares them to be ‘ so crafty and treacherous, that a
stranger may not be sure of his life amongst them.’
‘ Never trust them,’ he adds, ‘ with howsoever sub-
missive a knee they may bend before you’; though,
from his own record, the party received nothing but
kindness and hospitality whilst in the country. In this,
however, it must be admitted that he is echoing a
frequent and familiar cry. For there is little doubt that
to her many enemies England has constantly appeared
— ^in the words of one of them — the ‘ peryloust ’ and
‘ most outragyoust ’ nation of the earth.*

^ See Illustrative Notes, 12.

® Fifty years later the long trains of the English ladies still excited
surprise in the minds of foreigners. * Over their dress they wear a
gown with a long train lined with some comely fur : the ladies carry
the train of the gown under the arm, and the women of the people
wear it fastened to the girdle with a brooch, some in front and
some at the sides.’ (Costumi di Londra^

• See Illustrative Notes, 13.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

The embassy’s first halt after leaving London was
made at Windsor, and here they found the gallant
company ‘ of the Order of St. George,’ older by some
hundred years and less lavish of its favours than its
rival of the Golden Fleece. None the less the knights,^
‘ who all derive their origin from illustrious barons or
earls,’ welcomed Lev with a banquet, and exhibited
to him all the sights of the Castle, including the old
Chapel of the Order, so soon to make way for its
beautiful successor ; ® the heart of St. George, given to
Henry V. by the Emperor Sigismund ; and so great a
number of fallow-deer, black, white, variegated and
otherwise coloured, as had certainly never been seen
elsewhere. ‘And when the meal was over and my
lord was bidding farewell they said that they had never
had a dearer or more delightful guest, and prayed my
lord most urgently that he should have care as to the
proper inscribing of his name, for if he wished it should
be recorded in the book from which the Masses were
sung, that the perpetual memory of so distinguished a
man should survive. And even when we had set forth
once more upon our travels, they still followed running,
to inquire again after the name of my lord.’

The Bohemians now rode westward through a
teeming region of cloisters and churches, that were
all covered outwardly with lead and tin and within
marvellously adorned. The great Abbey of Reading
especially impressed them, and yet more its won-
derful effigy of the Virgin, ‘ so admirable that,
in my. opinion, neither have I seen nor shall I
ever see such an one, even should I progress
to the extreme ends of the earth. For there
could be no image more lovely or more beautiful.’
In Andover also a statue of Our Lady made ‘ in the
stone of alabaster ’ won their warm approval ; and in

Presumably the alms-knights or poor-knights of Windsor, who at
this time numbered twenty-six. (Cf. Ashmole.)

* Edward IV. pulled down the old chapel and began the new one
about ten years later.

THE DUKE OF CLARENCE 47

Salisbury there were two ‘images’ that went near
to rivalling even the unsurpassable figure of Reading.
These, according to Tetzel, were ‘ carved pictures ' ^
so arranged with weights that the figures actually
moved, showing in the most life-like fashion ‘how
the holy three Kings brought the gifts to Our Lady
and her Child, and how our Lord seized the gifts, and
how Our Lady and Joseph bowed and did reverence
to the holy three Kings, and how the Kings then
took their leave in the same manner : all as costly and
masterly arranged as life’ — as lively painted as the
deed was done. Again, in the same kind of imagery,
our Lord rose from the dead with a banner in His hand
and was served by the angels. ‘ And these seemed
not to be counterfeited, but rather living and proceed-
ing for all the world to see.’

The travellers stayed some days at Salisbury, and
wondered at its Castle ® and great park, one mile in
breadth and eight miles in length. Here, as at
Windsor, was an incredible abundance of animals,
the fallow-deer surpassing the number of hundreds,
and hares and rabbits innumerable being also to be
seen. ‘ If any day the King should order them
to be mustered, twenty thousand creatures might
easily be caught or killed.’

Within the town they found George, Duke of
Clarence, that dolorous prince who was to end his
days in the famous Butt of Malmsey. For the
moment, however, he was a young man of eighteen
years and on dry ground, right j03dul to see the
Lord Lev, to whom he proffered great honour and
reverence. The visit lasted over Palm Sunday,
and the embassy was privileged to take part in ‘a
magnifical procession, as when our Lord rode to

^ Geschnitzfen bildern. Schaschek calls them imagines^ a word
that may signify paintings (as with PhilQstratus),'but seems hereto
indicate carvings, in distinction to the excellentes ^ictura seen at
Brussels.

* ‘ There was a right fair and strong castelle within Old Saresbyri,
longging to the erles of Saresbyri.’ (Leland’s Itinerary^

48 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Jerusalem,’^ the Duke himgelf marching at the head
of the company and Rozmital near him. After the
service they were all bidden to the royal lodging
for a meal, ‘sumptuous as is the custom,’ at which,
although it was a fast-day, they ate for three hours.
The chief dish of the banquet was, indeed, a source
of great interest to the Bohemians, unversed as they
were in the culinary ingenuities wherewith their more
sophisticated neighbours soothed at once their con-
sciences and their appetites. ‘ He should be a fish,’
says Tetzel, ‘ but he was roast and set forth like
a duck. He had his wings, his feathers, his neck, his
feet, and laid eggs, and tasted like a wild duck. We
were fain to eat him as a fish but in my mouth he
was as flesh ; yet they said that he was in truth a fish ;
he grew at the first out of a worm in the sea, and
when he was big he took the ’form of a duck and
laid eggs, but the said eggs did not hatch forth and
nothing came from them, and he sought his food
ever in the sea and not on the land. Therefore
should he be held as a fish.’ These remarkable
facts are amended by Schaschek as follows : ‘ Amongst
other dishes, they gave us duck birds, which are bom
in the sea and eat no food, but live on air alone.'*

Salisbury Cathedral is described with enthusiasm
as splendid and spacious, of an incomparable elegance
both within and without, the spire especially rousing
their interest by its skilful building. Schaschek also
records, eertain peculiarities of the ritual, such as the
fact that at the celebration of the Mass, owing to ‘ a
thrice-repeated falling away from the Christian reli-
gion,’ no candles were used on the altars. At Easter-

> ‘ Upon Palme Sondaye they play the foies sadely, draw3mge after
them an Asse in a rope, when they be not moche distante from the
Woden Asse that they drawe.’ {Pylgremage of Pure Devotyon ; cf.
Brand’s Antiquities.) Sebastian Brandt describes how in Germany
also they ‘ lead about the town a little cart with a wooden ass and
a carved figure of their God, singing, throwing palms before it, and
performing many idolatries with this their wooden goijl.’

* See Illustrative Notes, 14.

THE CHANNEL

tide, on the other hand, these were set forth most
strangely with mirrors. He tells, too, how on Maundy
Thursday the King was wont to wash the feet of
thirteen paupers, presenting them afterwards with
rose-nobles and new apparel ; while, in memory of
the Supper of the Lord, all men supped in the
church.^

‘ In no land,’ conclude the scribes, ‘ have we been
had in greater honour than here. For in truth, both
by the King and by all his subjects, whithersoever
we went, even to the sea, were we honourably and
well entreated.’ And it was thus, with cheerful and
comfortable hearts, that the travellers quitted this
little kingdom of pastures and clouded hills, the
green and pleasant land of England.

From Salisbury the Bohemians went to Poole, ‘ the
end of England,’ whence they embarked on two ships
for Brittany, once more braving the pains and perils
of the unfamiliar element with all the qualms of
confirmed landlubbers. ‘ And all went above measure
ill with my lord,’ groans Tetzel, ‘ even before the
ship was prepared. They lifted up the horses on high
with a rope and let them down through a narrow hole
on to the floor, where they were forced to stand;
and it was so narrow that they must needs stand
against one another, yea, and even lean against one
another.’ Thereafter came a great storm that blew
them hither and thither, and to crown their misfortunes

^ ‘ In many places they celebrate the Supper of Christ on Green
Thursday with anious ceremonies. The monks and priests wash
the feet, and go with good bottles of wine and many wafers about
the church ; give to each one to drink and a wafer, to each one as
he deserves in the eyes of the priests who bear them. To this
devout supper come many lovely women, who wink and beckon to
the devout priests in all love and friendship, and the cups go often
round.’ {^Zimvteristhi Chronik?)

so THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

they were pursued by two great ‘ robber ships,’ who
did them much damage ‘ with a great clamour and
the firing of guns.’ These proved, however, to be
English galleys watching the coast of France, the
triumph of Elizabeth Woodville over Bona of Savoy
having brought the two countries to a fitful war ;
and, on learning the mission and high intent of the
Lord Lev, they instantly converted themselves into
an escort of honour. Indeed, on being shown the
letters of King Edward, all fell on their knees and
kissed them. ‘For it is their custom, whensoever
they hear the name of the King or see any of his
letters, that they should pay them this honour.’

The violence of the waves drove the voyagers to
Guernsey, an island which belonged to the King of
England but was bound to pay a tribute of 40,000
crowns yearly to the King of France.^ It was wooded
solely with laurel and cypress, and even for firewood
the inhabitants were fain to use these symbols — so
curiously blended — of victory and death. Here the
Bohemian Crusoes were stranded for eleven days
waiting for a favourable wind, and finding nothing
to buy whether for horse or man. Nearly three
weeks had sped before they reached St. Malo, and
as they had taken provision for but four days, they
were all in a sorry plight. The storms and tempests
raged unceasingly and the Bohemians spent the
greater part of the time on their knees. There was
great commotion, too, among the horses, ‘for they
fell against each other down there below* and grew
very tired.’ When the poor beasts were landed,
they could neither stand nor go and were sorely
spent.

From St. Malo, where ‘ they keep dogs in the place
of watchmen and none may dare to go forth by night

^ The Channel Islands sulfered the lot of shuttlecocks between
England and France during all this period.

* ‘When the ship gave a lurch by a gust of wind, the horses imme-
diately fell over e&ch other in a heap, and consequently nearly
capsized the vessel. ’ (^Journal of Duke of Wurtemberg.)

THE DUKE OF BRITTANY 51

lest he should be torn in pieces,’ ^ the party went to
Nantes, to stay for twelve days with Francois II.,
last of the Dukes of Brittany and recent ally of
Charles of Burgundy in the war of the Weale
Publique. ‘A comely, straight and serious man,’
writes Tetzel, but apparently no careless giver. For
though he bestowed his Order — ^perhaps that of the
Ear of Corn and Ermine, founded by Francois I.
in 1450 — on four of the party, ‘he gave it most un-
willingly.’ The Duke, moreover, chanced at this time
to lose his mother and be ‘deeply mournful,’ so the
travellers urged quickly on through a country of hills
and oaken forests and goodly harvest lands, noting
by the way that every peasant had his little domain
engirdled by a hedge or wall, whereby the cattle
might be left unherded ; that wolves were rare, but
fiercely hunted and, when caught, skinned and hung
by the roadside and that the many ponds and
reservoirs, which were drained one year in every
six, produced often a weight of fish worth 200,000
gold pieces.

On the fourth day they arrived in Saumur, a comely
city set upon an hill and circled by the river Loire,
which stream exceeded the Danube in breadth, and
was so inordinately rich in lampreys that more than

* ‘ This town at St. Malo hath one rarity in it, for there is here
a perpetual garrison of English ; but they are of English dogs, which
are let out in the night to guard the ships, and eat the carrens up and
down the streets, and so they are shut up again in the morning.’
{Familiar Letters of James Howell.) ‘ On y Idche douze ou quinze
gros chiens, qui s’en yont d’abord faire le tour de la Ville sur les
rampars, et d^chirent immancablement tous ceux qu’ils rencontrent ;
aussi avant que de leur permettre de faire la patroiiille ; on sonne
une cloche pendant quelque temps, pour avertir le monde de leur
venue.’ {Voyages histomques, 1698.)

* The Bourgeois de Paris (1423) tells how the wolves invaded Paris
every night, and how three or four were often taken at one time and
carried through the streets hanging by their hind feet. Even in the
seventeenth century they abounded in many parts of France, and
Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes them as of ‘ two sorts : the mastiff
wolf, thick and short, though he could not run fast, yet would fight
with our dogs ; the greyhound wol^ long and swift, who many times
escaped,’ but, if captured, was easily killed. {Autobiography.) And
cf. John Evelyn’s Diary.

52 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

four hundred fish were often taken at one catch.^
The Castle they found exquisite, with its roofs of
slate and walls of great squared stones ; while
round and about lay a landscape as fertile as it
was pleasant, with fair green meadows and lordly
pleasure gardens and friendly fruitful orchards. At
a little distance from the town and in the midst of
a game-haunted forest of oaks Rene of Anjou — so-
called ‘ King of Cecelly ’ and lover of all the arts —
was a-hunting. And here, in his ‘ above measure
splendid pleasure-house,’ he was found by the Lord
Lev, with his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, and his
valiant son the Duke of Calabria. Now this year of
1466 was the notable moment when Reil6, not cdntent
with writing himself ‘King of Naples, of both the
Sicilies and Jerusalem,’ was adding to the letters of
his glorious style® no less than the sovereignty of
Aragon. Moreover, he was traversing the most lively
period of those fantastical extravagances that have
made his name a joy and a by-word to history. Yet
the chroniclers tell us but little of this famous per-
sonage — whom Shakespeare derides as not so wealthy
as an English yeoman — save that he was ‘ a comely,
merry old man ’ ; that he spoke fluently in their lan-
guage; that his wife was ‘a woman of middle size
who had right lovely and excellent maids ’ ; that his
minstrels were the best they had heard; that he
presented Lev with his Order (probably that of the
Holy Ghost); and that he was possessed of a dwarf

^ Hubertus Thomas describes the Loire at Amboise as a * river
of a marvellous sort, which albeit it hath sprung scarce one mile
away, yet in the month of May, m the space of fourteen days or at
the most three weeks, produceth an incredible multitude of fish, as
large as perch, which are so well-tasting that I can swear that in all
my days I have never eaten better. Every one may fish therein at
his pleasure, even to within a few feet of the source of the river, the
which place has been preserved for the king^s kitchen and table.’

* ‘ Having as muche profites of the letters of his glorious stile, as
rentes and revenues out of the said large and riche realms and
dominions (because the kyng of Arragon toke the profites of the
same, and would make no accompt thereof to Duke Reiner).’
(Hall.)

RENE OF ANJOU S3

called Tuybelin/ ‘who has the very smallest head
that I have seen in all my days : he wears a bonnet
no wider than a big orange.’

Far more interesting, indeed, did they find the heads
of no less than six apostles in a cloister hard by, and
the wine-vats of the mighty, rich and very a|fed Jean
Beauvau, former Bishop of Angers. ‘ And he gave
us the costliest wine to drink,’ writes Tetzel of this
prelate, who had been dispossessed of his see in the
previous year and was now, by Papal command, con-
fined to his own castle ; ‘ for he had round him the
costliest great vineyards and in the midst of the vine-
yards a cellar, and when they have pressed out the
wine it flows thus straight into the cellar. There are
great tuns which may never be removed, and wine
that is forty years old.’ Rend also invited his guests
to visit his Castle of Angers, and here they were
moved to genuine enthusiasm. It had been built, they
were told, thirteen hundred years before their arrival,
by ‘ a certain countess,’ and they were greatly im-
pressed by its colossal wall, that carried two-and-
twenty large and spacious towers ‘ all of the same
shape,’ and enclosed a church and palace of indescrib-
able richness and magnificence. All the apartments
were adorned with the most costly tapestries,® and
in the King’s chamber the coverlid of the bed alone
was worth 40,000, florins. They expatiate, too, with
delight on Rend’s collection of strange rare beasts :
lions, leopards and ostriches, ‘ with goats from heathen
lands having ears more than three span long ’ ; though
they mention neither the foreign roses and carnations,
the ivory-hued peacocks, nor the red-legged partridges,
for which France still owes him a debt of gratitude
In the cloister of St. Maurice they saw the tomb that
the King of Sicily had prepared for himself of fair

^ This was probably the dwarf Triboulet, for whom, according to
the royal accounts, a red cap was purchased in 1447. He was
always dressed in great splendour. (Cf. Lecoy de la Marche.)

* Ren^ had a passion for tapestries, which he carried so far as to
write a poem on the subject.

S4 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

white marble. It was guarded at the entrance by
three statues of armoured knights, equipped with
swords and lances, and within were images of the
King and Queen, crowned with diadems of gold and
precious stones.^

In Tours the party visited with reverent amazement
the fine Cathedral of St. Martin and the shrine of the
chivalrous saint ; ® but their spirits were damped by a
rude rebuff which they suffered from no less a person
than the sister of the King of France. From this
princess, indeed — ^wife, at the time, of Gaston de Foix®
— they won- no frolic welcome. For when she heard
that the Lord Lev was both a Bohemian and brother-
in-law to the reigning King of that country, she not
only wholly declined to receive the embassy, but
granted its leader, even when they came suddenly face
to face in the chapel, no further honour than a single
nod. But Magdalena was a daughter of tragedy and
the tragedy owed its being to Bohemia ; so that even
the disconsolate visitors should have seen some excuse
for her conduct. Just ten years earlier another and a
greater embassy from ‘ the frontiers of Christendom ’
had also entered the rejoicing city. From the young
King Ladislas it came, sovereign of Bohemia, Hungary
and Poland, already — ^though but eighteen years of
age — known for his charms and accomplishments as
les delices du monde ; and its romantic goal was
his newly affianced bride, the Princess of France.
The procession had numbered seven hundred noble

^ ‘ The said sepulchre is of, black stone, and the two figures that are
above the pictures of the King and Queen with other carvings in high
relief are of a marble so fine that it seems to be alabaster.^ (Beatis.)
The inventories mention three knights bearing the heaume, the banner,
and the standard, with three ladies seated and reading their hours, the
whole in ‘ stone of Rejasse.’ The queen was the first wife, Isabelle
of Lorraine, (Lecoy de la Marche.)

* The cathedral, now almost wholly vanished, was still intact when
John Evelyn visited the town. ‘Both the church and monastery of
Martin are large,’ he writes, * having four square towers, fair organs,
and a stately altar, where they show the bones and ashes of St.
Martin,, with other reliques.’

* Son of Gaston IV., and father of Fran9ois Phoebus.

MAGDALENA SS

lords and ladies sent for the service of their coming
Queen, together with a chariot branlant et moult riche,
and eighty fair white ambling nags. But even while
the French princes and nobles were outbidding one
another in the splendour of their welcome, while
the bride with great apparel and pomp was actually
girding herself for departure, this prince of her dreams
was taken suddenly with sickness and died. The
cause of the tragedy was uncertain, and accusations of
poison were scattered broadcast. Some held that the
deed was accomplished by the hand of a regretful lady
of Prague, and through the curious means of an apple
in the royal bath.’^ But common rumour assigned the
foul treachery to the young King’s lieutenant and
successor, George of Podebrad himself. To add to
the horror of the occasion, when the princess’s father,
Charles VI 1. of France, learned the sad tidings, he
‘ therewith toke such a pensyfFeness ’ ® that he also
deceased ; and Magdalena was thus left doubly
desolate. ‘And the saying went,’ adds Tetzel, ‘that
she ordered that all their escutcheons should be tom
to pieces and besmeared with dirt,’ while, since
that day, she had never been seen to laugh. The
chroniclers describe her appearance rather curtly as
‘ungainly, of a middle height, a little brown under
the eyes : not half-way so beautiful as when betrothed
to King Lassla ’ ; but under the circumstances, they
were perhaps hardly the most impartial judges.

If Amboise, ‘the favourite dwelling of the elder

* ‘ King Lancelot was poisoned at Prague, in Bohemia, by a gentle-
woman of a good house (whose brother my selfe have seene) of whom
he was enamored, and she likewise of him ; so far forth that she being
displeased with his marriage . . . poisoned him in a bathe, as shee
gave him a peece of apple to eate, having conveighed the poison into
the haft of her knife.’ (Commynes.) ‘After his death,’ adds Danett,

* George Boiebrac usurped the realm of Bohemia.’ Henri Estienne
quotes this account as one of his leading exan^jples in the chapter ‘ De
la cruautd de nostre si^cle.’ .^neas Sylvius accuses Podebrad of the
actual crime, and the accusation is repeated by M6zeray ; but it is
denied by Bohemian historians.

® Fabyan.

S6 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

King of France’ (Charles VI L), and Blois, with its
‘loveliest bridge of stone,’ drew slight notice from
the chroniclers, Beaugency inspired them with a
pious excitement. For, arriving there on the morrow
of the Feast of the Holy Spirit (Whit Monday), they
were privileged to see ‘ a thing like to a miracle
happen.’ Sixty people were being dipped for their
souls’ health in the Loire, and of these one, a woman,
fell wholly into the water and should have drowned.
But, marvellous to behold, she swam ‘ under the
waves’ for two miles with her infant in her arras,
and at last came ashore without hurt : ‘ this thing we
saw.’

But it was at Meung^ (where some five years earlier
Master Francis Villon ■ had been prisoned in his
noisome pit) that the embassy confronted the most
important moment of its progress through France.
For, crouching in this little town, they found that
‘ universal spider ’ ® and spinner of the webs of Europe,
Louis XL ; occupied apparently with no more perilous
pastime than the chase, yet surely weaving hour by
hour new schemes and projects — ‘subtilisant jour et
nuit nouvelles pensees ’ — for the entanglement of both
friends and foes. And indeed, seeing that the shame
of Conflans lay immediately behind and the ignominy
of Peronne loomed immediately ahead, it must be
admitted that he had no inconsiderable cause for
thought. This reflection does not, however, concern
the chroniclers. For them, the master of mystejry was
merely holding, as was his wont, a hunting court, and
lurking in his usual furtive and fugitive manner in an
unworthy residence. He lived gladly in little towns,
they tell, and But rarely in the large ones, and had
more than sixty door-keepers, who ever in their armour
lay without his chamber door. Even the villages that

' According to Tetzel, Louis was residing at Candcs, but the pass-
port is dated from Meung-sur-Loire.

* ‘Lyon rampant en croppe de montaigne a combattu I’universal
araigne,’ wrote Chastellain. The lion waS Philip the Good.

LOUIS XI

surrounded bis abode were ever occupied and guarded
by an army of 20,000 borse, and the visitors themselves
were allowed no habitation near his person, but were
compelled to lodge discreetly in a hamlet a good three
miles away. He was a man of no great height, with
black hair, a brownish countenance, eyes deep in
the head, a long nose and small legs. His ‘all-
mightiest ’ delight was in sport,^ ‘ and men say that he
is an enemy to Germans.’ In any case, he now showed
his friendship to Bohemia — ^and he was soon to prove
a useful, if slippery, ally to George of Podebrad * — by
treating the visitors with ‘ a splendid splendour,’
inviting the Lord Lev to stay with him in Paris for
the half or even the whole of a year. ‘And it was
said that neither the King nor the Queen had paid
such attention ever to any prince or lord as to my
master.’ In fact, the Queen, the gentle little Charlotte
of Savoy, infected perhaps by English manners, carried
her welcome to the verge of indelicacy ; for, receiving
him in the midst of her ladies — all, as usual, miracles
of beauty — ‘she embraced my lord with her arms,
and each one kissed him on the mouth.’ And verily
it was a pity that she herself was but ‘ a middling
handsome woman.’* As to ‘the costly costliness of
the costly cupboards and vessels of silver, and of the
costly meats, and of the mighty earls and lords who
served at table, no one would believe it.’ In short, it-
was evidently not without reason that Louis was
described by his contemporaries as ever working
industriously to win any one who might do him

^ The Bohemian embassy of the previous year had experienced the
greatest difficulty in finding him, ‘because he was never long in one
place, but was always roaming about on the chase and hunting.’
(Wratislaw.) ‘Above all pastimes he loved hunting and hawking in
their season, hunting especially,’ wrote Commynes. He kept ‘des
legions de chiens, d’oyseaux, de Veneurs et de Fauconniers and
rumour declared that even when on his death-bed he caused rats to be
lobsedinhisbedroomand chased by cats. (Cf. MdzerayandSte-Palaye.)

* He refused to allow Podebrad’s excommunication to be published
in France. (Cf. Pastor.)

* ‘La reyne n’estoit point de celles ou on devroit prendre grant
plaisir, mais au demourant fort bonne dame.’ (Commynes.)

S8 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

service or harm, sparing neither money nor labour to
attain his ends. For, whatever his other failings, ex-
travagance and display were not amongst them.^ The
Bohemians, however, reaped the benefit of his prudent
policy and passed upon their way well pleased.

Meung led to the learned city of Orleans, where
they found the future Louis XII. of France. The
young Duke was at this time but four years old and
living under the tutelage of his mother, Mary of
Cleves.® F or Charles of Orleans — that agreeabl e singer
who was taken from the field of Agincourt to so
strange a variety of English prisons — had lately died,
and his widow alone remained to combat the formid-
able enemy of the Orleans house. ‘ A woman of but
very moderate looks ’ is Tetzel’s verdict upon the
Duchess Mary, who seems indeed to have been but
a sorry successor to la gracieme bonne et belle, la
nonpareille princesse of Charles’s earlier dreams. Nor,
to judge from the emblem, a dropping tear,® with
which the worthy lady delighted to adorn even so
mean an object as her garter, can this court of Orleans
have now been any such lovely haunt of gaiety and
Hesse as it had proved in its golden days of poetry
and prosperity to the poets and lovers of France.
The Bohemians, however, were irrepressible. Her
ladies were ‘ marvellous comely,’ they record ; and
they danced and were well amused.

* ‘ Espfece de sublime Harpagon couronne, avare et avide pour le
compte de la France,’ said Barbey d’Aur^villy. And see the contem-
porary accounts of his economy in dress. ‘ Les sunples gens . . .
s’esmerveill^rent tous de son estre et dirent tout haut : Benedicite !
et est-ce Ik un roy de France, le plus grand roy du monde ? ' Tout ne
vaut pas vmgt francs, cheval et habillement de son corps.’ (Chastel-
lain.) The Castilians jested at his array, writes Commynes, ‘saying
that this proceeded of miserie.’ Of his ‘ nyce and wanton disgysyd
apparayll,’ says Fabyan, ‘ I might make a longe rehersayl ; but for
it shulde sownde' more to dishonour of suche a noble man, that was
apparaylled more lyke a mynstrell than a prince royal, therefor I pass
it over. For albeit that he was so new fangyll in his dothinge, yet he
had many virtues.’

’ Sister of Duke John of Cleves. See supra, p. i8.

* Cf. Maulde la Clavikre.

THROUGH FRANCE S9

The travellers now went southward through the
pleasant lands of Poitou and Guienne, and sought those
well-trodden slopes of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois,
‘ where rests so graciously the dear Virgin,’ whose
voice had sped to victory and flame the little peasant
maid of Domremy. This, indeed, was a spot to touch
the hearts of all knightly pilgrims. For besides
possessing many fragments of the excellent saint her-
self — a thumb, a rib, her ‘beyond measure beautiful
hair’ — the famous sanctuary was stored and stuffed
with the symbols of victorious warfare. ‘ Whoso here
dedicateth himself, whether in fight or otherwise, him
she guardeth and leaveth not,’ says Tetzel ; and it was
plain that this was the favoured shrine of all whose
ways led toward danger and dusty death. Kings,
dukes and gentlemen, all paid here their vows, bring-
ing with them offerings of vast value — precious jewels
and whole ‘silver bodies as heavy as themselves.’
The church was hung with the armours and appur-
tenances of vanquished foes and adorned by statues,
thirteen of men and one of a woman,’- in wax, of the
size and shape of life.

In Chatellerault they visited Charles of Anjou,
Comte de Maine and brother of the King of Sicily, of
which prince ‘it is said in France,’ writes Tetzel,

‘ that it was by his fault that the King of France had
lost the battle of Paris against the Duke of Burgundy,’*
Be that as it may, Charles now displayed great zeal in
the entertainment of the foreign guests, and sent the
Lord Lev two cupboards of plate ‘ which he for very

* This may possibly have been an effigy of Joan of Arc. Images of
her were placed in many churches, especially during her captivity.

* His conduct at Montlh^ty had certainly not been above suspicion,
for, when posted by Louis with 800 men-at-arms in face of the Dukes
of Berri and Brittany, he had ‘dislodged continually before them’
and finally fled with his entire troop. Such a proceeding, however,
was but of slight importance in this surprising engagement, since to
do the like appears to have been the instant and constant desire of
every man in the field. ‘ Never was in any battell so great flight on
both sides,’ says Commynes in his description of this curious race for
the rear ; while, as to the guilt of Charles of Anjou, ‘ I beleeve it not,’
he declares.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

amazement did have weighed,’ together with gifts ot
a blue damask and a horse.

Traversing the great woods oi Chatellerault and
Fontenay le Comte and hurrying past Poitiers, the
party reached the ancient walls of Lusignan. This
they found securely watched and guarded, since
Louis XL was ‘ threatened by many enemies and in
all that district possessed no other town.’ Here, too,
they were privileged to visit the enchanted castle of
that lovely Melusine, whose story has been the solace
of generations. Won by her husband. Count Ray-
mond de Forest, on the condition that she should
never be seen by him ‘ despoiled on a Saturday,' ^ the
exquisite lady had remained for many years his
irreproachable countess and borne him ten fair sons.
On a sudden, however, her husband, tempted by his
brother to an evil curiosity, made a hole in the door
and beheld her ; above, ‘ full white like as is the snow
upon a fair branch,’ but furnished below with a
serpent’s tail, great and horrible, barred with silver
and azure, flashing high and beating the water of her
bath. Whereafter, in raiment of woe, she made
clamorous the towers of Lusignan. One of her sons
was fabled to have become a King of Bohemia, so that
the history should have had a special interest for the
travellers. The prosaic Schaschek, however, only
briefly records that the Castle had been built by a
woman who, for her evil life, had been transformed
into a dragon, and that they had seen the ancient
tower whereon she was wont to complain when the
King of France or a member of the house of Lusignan
was about to die.®

‘ Jean d’Arras. Cf. The Romans of Partenay, ed. Skeat ; Melusine,
ed A. K. Donald.

’ Cf. Mezeray’s curious comment on this tradition : ‘ Si cela est
ainsi, les Th^ologiens en rechercheront la cause, et nous enseigneront
si nous devons croire que de pareilles choses proviennent, ou de la
malice des ddmons, qui se plaisent k mettre les hommes en peine par
ces illusions ; ou de la bontd de Dieu : qui pour monstrer aux incrd-
dules I’immortahtd de Time et les merveilles de I’autre monde, veuille
permettre aux Esprits hdroiques de paroistre quelques fois en celuy-cy
dans les lieux qu’ils y ont aymdz durant leur vie.’

TWO CHAMPIONS 6i

A forest-country of oaks and chestnuts, in which
game was plentiful but the travelling vile, brought the
Bohemians to Blaye, and there they meditated over
the mortal remains of the mighty Roland (mysteriously
declared by the chronicler to have been ‘ executed by
command of his father, King Solomon ’) ; of his com-
rade-in-arms, the holy ‘ Olyfernus ’ or Oliver ; ^ and of
his sister, the holy Belanda. ‘ All exceedingly tall
people ; for Roland’s sister was twenty of my spans
long and her brother much longer and taller still,’
whileeven the hero’sfamous sword Durendall measured
eleven spans and a half. There too they learned, under
a curious guise, the fate of another of Europe’s great
champions, dead, be it noted, but thirty-five years
before. ‘ This city,’ says Schaschek, ‘ was held by
the Kings of England for one hundred and fifty years.
But it was won back by a certain prophetical woman
{foemina fatidica), who, indeed, recovered the whole
kingdom of France from the English. That woman,
although born of a herdsman, was so ornamented by
God with virtues, that to what matter soever she
addressed herself, it was brought to a right end. Yet
in her last battle being captured by the King of
England and taken to England, and having been there
by his orders placed upon a brazen horse and led
throughout the city of London, she was at length, by
the violence of flames, done to death and transmuted
to ashes, which were afterwards scattered abroad in
the sea.’ For thus strangely had the brief lapse

^ This mention of ‘Olyferaus-* is said by M. Bonnaffd to be a
mistake on the part of the chronicler for Roland’s famous Oliphant
or horn of Ivory. But Navagero records that ‘on the one side
of the Chapel is buried Orlando, and on the other Olivieri ’ ; and
Hubertus Thomas visited the vaults wherein ‘Roland and Oliver,
and between them the holy Romanus, rest in a not very large grave.’
(See infra^ p. 31 5.) It must be added that Roncesvalles also claimed
the tomb of Roland, which is descnbed at length by another pilgrim
to Compostella. ( Viaggio of Domenico Laffi. Cf. Ugendes du Moyen
Age^ by Gaston Paris.) With regard to the name Solomon, it seems
likely that this is merely a misnaming of the stepfather Ganelon who,
according to the Chanson de Roland^ treacherously arranged the
ambuscade in which the hero was killed.

62 the bohemian Ulysses

of one generation embroidered the tragedy of Joan
of Arc.

Pressing ever southward, Lev and his company
passed through Bordeaux and crossed the wide-mouthed
Garonne, ‘seven leagues in breadth,’ descrying dur-
ing their transit various islands, ‘ in one of which
were lodged wild boars, in another pheasants and in
a third the loveliest vineyards.’ In Klerxy and Daxe
they made trial of the warm baths ; in Bayonne they
noted the immense quantity of trout and salmon that
thronged the sweet waters of the river; and in
St. Jean de Luz they admired the goodly trees and
the many mellow red-tiled roofs of the little hamlet.
The Bohemians, indeed, seem to have been especially
susceptible to the homely, decorous charms of the
French country life ; and of all the things which they
saw, none affected them more pleasantly than the
frequent houses whereon ‘ in the stead of roofs were
gardens planted with vines and fruit.’ ‘ The kingdom
of France,’ declares Schaschek finally, ‘ is magnificent,
^nd greatly abounding in all things, so that its like
may not be found among Christian kingdoms.’ ‘ It is
furnished,’ adds Tetzel, ‘with all that the mind of
man can imagine.’ ^

After a brief sojourn with * a certain Count ’ in ever-
hungry and ever-angry Gascony, the Bohemians now
crossed the River Bidassoa and found themselves , in
Spain: ‘the land of old renown, the land of wonder
and mystery,’ a country as magical and romantic in the
days of Boabdil as in the days of Borrow. But at
first they were confronted by its sterner aspects. For
here was the mountainous region of Viscaya or Biscay,
a sorry land with a folk evil and murderous and full of
strange habits.* Here, too, food could be procured for
^ See Illustrative Notes, 15.

* Wales, Castile and Biscay resemble one another, writes Boorde,

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

THE GATES OF SPAIN 63

neither man nor beast; and more than ten of their
horses grew sick unto death. The women and
maidens all had shaven heads, while the priests had
wives and were ignorant of everything save the ten
commandments alone. There was no confession other
than by the priest himself at the altar ; and the people,
instead of going to church, sat and kneeled the livelong
day by the side of costly tombstones, which they
decked with sweet-tasting herbs and flowers and
burning lights. ‘ Item ; this is how in that country
we may recognise the 'nobles ; whoso weareth no
shoe on his right foot, he is a nobleman.’ Each
smallest townlet had its gallows, whereon the
poor were freely hanged for the stealing of so little
as a farthing’s worth of goods. Once, also, the
travellers beheld an immeasurably barbarous punish-
ment. The criminal was bound with chains to a high
pillar round which were placed at a certain distance
four great stakes: and these, being set on fire, in
a horrible and lingering fashion roasted him to death.

On the other hand, the Bohemians were greatly
astonished at the industry with which the slopes of
the Pyrenees — ‘ the terrible gates ’ of Spain^were
cultivated. For all about the mountains were planted
with fruit trees, ‘ sown in like manner as is with
us the hemp.’ Every burgess and every peasant
possessed some thousands of these trees and made
therefrom a drink; for they ^ad no grapes and —
miserable beings that they were — beer was unknown
to them.

The wamderers now crossed seventeen windings of
the River C^dagun and reached the boundary between
Biscay and Castile, where, despite their comprehensive

‘ for there is muche poverty, and many reude and beastlye people/
As for a journey through Spain, ‘ I assure all the worlde, that I had
rather goe v, times to Rome oute of Englond, than ons to Compostel :
by water it is no pain, but by land it is the greatest jurney that an
Englyshman may go. And whan I returnyd, and did come into
Aquitany, I dyd kis the ground for joy, surrendring thankes to God
that I was delivered out of greate daungers, as well from many theves,
as from honger and colde.^

64 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

passports, they had considerable trouble with the toll
officials (fublicant), who advanced upon them in an
armed band.^ Rozmital presented a warlike front to
the foe but parleyed diplomatically, knowing that, if
only one of these publicans and sinners had been
touched, ‘ then had we all been thoroughly murdered ’ ;
and, though he was forced to pay large sums for his
baggage, he succeeded in obtaining from them docu-
ments that would ensure his complete immunity from
such extortions in the future.

A ride of thirteen days through a wild and hill y
country killed two of the Lord Lev’s finest horses
from exhaustion; and worse, so powerful was the
scent of the rosemary* and the box-wood with which
the mountain sides were covered, and so glittering the
pebbles with which the rocky paths were strewn,® that
the entire cavalcade suffered from a violent and un-
ceasing headache.

Here again, in Castile, they abode constantly
amazed by the remarkable practices of the inhabitants,

‘ Christian, heathen and Jew,’ who in those years
preceding the advent of the Catholic Kings dwelled all
together in so curious a commerce and so strange
a marriage of religions. Having inquired how it
came about that the Christians partook of meat-dishes
on the fast-days, they were informed that these pre-
parations consisted only of the livers and lungs of
animals, which were not flesh but merely contained in

^ Many other travellers were to complain of the customs officers
of Spain. ‘The stranger’s ignorance makes the Spaniard’s profit’
was their very practical reply to all complaints, says Madame
d’Aulnoy. Cf. also the Dutch traveller Van Aarssen’s adventure
among them.

^ ‘ The very brute animals make themselves beds of rosemary and
other fragrant flowers ; and when one is at sea, if the wind blow from
the shore, he may smell this soil before he come in sight of it, many
leagues off, by the strong odoriferous scent it casts.’ (HowelL)

® Hullez and vailaiez mony schalt thou fynde,

The sight thereof thenn maketh men blynde,

Litell coron, but craggez and stonez,

And that maketh Pylgrymez wery bonez.

(The ‘ Musical Pilgrim,’ )

A BULL-FEAST

flesh.^ At Medina Pomar their host, the ‘ good ’
Count of Haro, was ‘ called a Christian, but no man
knoweth of what faith he is,’ and in his household all
beliefs were tolerated. He was polite and hospitable
to Lev but ‘wondered exceedingly why he should
have come so far.'® These townspeople also were
evil and hostile, and the visitors went in fear of their
lives; while, in the heart of the grim and lonely
country that lay beyond, they were vigorously
attacked by the said Christians, heathens and Jews,
‘who did us great harm with their cross-bows and
spear-thrusts ; but we shot back at them also, for each
one of us carried his crossbow.’

They arrived, however, safely in the melancholy
town of Burgos,® and were received with respect and
attention by the citizens, who, in addition to the usual
gratifications, provided for their entertainment the
exciting spectacle of ‘a hunt of wild bulls.’ This
function — to the Bohemians new, strange and not a
little dangerous — interested them deeply. First, they
were astounded at the absence of the homely cow and
her comfortable produce; for here, they found, the
cattle were never fed in stables as in other lands, but
were let roam in-desert places, marked only with the
mark of their possessor, and captured for sport alone.
As to cheese or butter, the natives neither used them
nor knew even what they were. When a feast-day

^ ‘ They take a licence from the Pope^s nuncio, which costs about a
shilling, and which gives them leave to eat . . . the head, feet, and
inwards of fowls, etc., every Saturday throughout the year. And it
seems' to me {iretty odd, that on this day they should eat the feet,
head, and inwards, and yet dare not eat of any other part of the
same creature/ ( T/ie Lad^s Travels into S^ain,)

® ‘They are most impertinently inquisitive, whence you come?
whither you go ? . . . what do you come into our country for ? We
do not go into yours.’ (John Ray.)

® Navagero gives a depressing account of Burgos, which seems to
have struck him as little better than a city of dreadful night, ‘ There
are few parts,’ he defclares, ‘not melancholy’ ; and the melancholy
of the streets was admirably served by the melancholy of the skies.
He quotes too with relish the Spanish sayings that in Burgos there
are diezes meses dHnviemo^ y dos de injiemo^ and that the city ‘ wears
mourning for all Castile,’

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

occurred, they would catch two or three bulls out of
the herd, and send them one by one into the market-
place of the town, blocking the mouths of the streets
with mounted horsemen. The animals were then
driven in a circle, while little darts or arrows,
‘ fashioned as goads,’ were hurled at them, till in one
bull alone many darts might be sticking. ‘ The brute,
excited and inflamed, runs round and attacks whomso-
ever he meets.’ At last, when the bulls were wearied
with their running and well wounded by the darts, the
great dogs were loosed ; and these, ‘ tearing one down
with mighty strength,’ held him till the slaughterers
came. ‘And they hold so firmly by the ears with
their teeth, that whatsoever they lay hold of, by no
force soever is it possible to drag them away, unless
the ear be cut off or their mouths be opened with an
iron.’ ^ The conquered brute is then roped about the
horns, dragged by force to the slaughter-house and
slain, its flesh being parcelled out among the people
of the country-side. ‘ And no butcher may kill nor
offer for sale any beef without it has been hunted by
the dogs. And it is the best and most tender meat to
eat of any venison that may be had.’ On this so
notable occasion no less than thirteen bulls were
brought in ‘ out of the wilderness in a cage ’ ; and in
the baiting one horse was killed, and a man and two
other horses injured.

But besides these ‘ bloody terrors ’ there was much
to be seen in Burgos, especially the great Cathedral,
built in the Moorish style ‘by two German archi-
tects,’ and a priceless gilded statue of the Virgin.
Furthermore, the embassy was here privileged to
behold great miracles. A bowshot from the town
was a crucifix, whose substance and origin were alike
wrapped in the mists of sanctity. ‘ It is not of wood,’
writes Tetzel, ‘ and it is not of stone, and the body is
composed just like unto that of a dead man. The hair
and the nails grow, and the limbs, when they are
^ See Illustrative Notes, r6.

MIRACLE

touched, move, and one can feel the skin, and it hath
a terrible solemn countenance. The great masters
say that Nicodemus prayed to God, when he took
Him from the cross, that He would suffer him to
make such a likeness after His image, even as He
was crucified ; and in the night the crucifix appeared
to him and remained long in his custody, and he
prayed ever to it.’^ On the very day of their visit
there chanced three notable signs. For ‘a child that
had been dead three days and a child that had both
its legs broken and a man that had the wild fire,
all became on that day whole and sound ; and daily
do countless great miracles happen.’ Schaschek,
indeed, less generous of imagination, declares that
over two hundred years had passed since the per-
formance of the last wonder. Both chroniclers,
however, join in ecstasy over the miraculous coming
of the crucifix. For in the year of our Lord 412 ^ a
lonely galley had been discovered sailing the open
sea. The Catalan pirates who encountered it had
drawn near cautiously with intent to rob. But the
ship was empty save of a great chest ; and when they
sought to break this open they fell down and lay
as dead men. Moreover, a great wind blew them
Violently and at once to Burgos, and their most
strenuous efforts to depart were of no smallest avail.
Recognising this as a sign from God, they longed
ardently to rid themselves of their difficult treasure ;
but they were at a loss how to do so, since they dared
not make known their presence to the people of

^ ‘It must be granted that this place and sight strike one with
an awful regard : the crucifix is of carved work, and cannot be better
made ; its carnation is very natural ; it is covered from the breasts to
the feet with a fine linen, in several folds or plaits, which makes it
look like a loose jerkin, and in my opinion is not very agreeable. . . .
However, if works miracles, and this is one of the chief objects of
devotion in Spain; the religious tell you it sweats every Friday.’
(D’Aulnoy.) Even in the eighteenth century it was still supposed
to be possessed of this virtue, and therefore the indubitable work of
Nicodemus.

* Schaschek says that the voyage took place only ‘ 500 years ago,
and that the galley was discovered by the Castilian ships.

68 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Burgos, whom they had so frequently spoiled and
enslaved. Fortunately a hermit passed by, who
counselled them to take the sacred chest to the
Bishop; and this they presently did. Now, at the
very moment of their arrival at the Bishop’s palace,
the prelate — a converted Jew — ^was asleep, and
dreaming of just such a crucifix in just such a chest,
sailing the sea on just such a ship. So when he
awoke and heard the tale, he neither Wasted time
in reflection nor stayed to capture the thieves, but
ordered a universal fast, went with a great procession
to the ship and kneeled with all his priests before the
precious cargo. The chest thereupon opened of itself
and made manifest the contents, and the crucifix was
at once taken with great solemnity to its present
resting-place in the Augustine’s Convent. The
citizens, wishing to have the holy object in the town,
had often and by force fetched it away to the mother-
church within the walls ; but ever it had taken itself
back in the night — a fact which so impressed the
Jewish kinsmen of the Bishop that they forthwith
became Christians. The eldest of his four brothers
attained, in fact, to such extreme sanctity, ‘ that on one
glorious day the crucifix spake to him and bowed
towards him’; and hereupon he sold all his goods,
dowered all the poor maidens of the town and
ransomed every Christian prisoner from the infidels,
asking no guerdon save the captive’s shirt: ‘where-
fore one seeth many hundred shirts of many rare
shapes hanging in the church.’

Of the Cid, the ‘ Honour of Spain,’ whose tomb
they should surely have sought, the Bohemians make
no mention. But they briefly record a visit to the
famous nunnery of Las Huelgas,^ where they were

^ ‘ Its nuns are all noble, and the abbess almost a sovereign
princess, by the extent of her territories, the number of her pre-
rogatives, and the variety of her jurisdiction.’ (Swinburne.) She
exercised these rights over fourteen great cities, more than fifty
towns, seventeen convents, twelve commanderships, and innumerable
benefices.

OLD CASTILE

shown an altar-piece fashioned entirely of silver.
Here, too, they renewed their rapture of Neuss, being
most graciously received by the high-born and ‘ very
comely ’ nuns, who escorted them about the gardens,
and entertained them with dancing, music and ‘ vari-
ous delicious plays.’ ^ Nor were infidel pleasures
lacking, even in this city of ‘many costly churches,’
for when they called on a certain Christian count,
they found all the feminine visitors clad in the heathen
or Turkish manner and behaving to match. ‘And
the ladies and maids danced delectable dances after
the heathen fashion, and they are all brown women
and have black eyes and eat or drink little, and
they arc fain to see travellers and love Germans
greatly.’ This caballero, indeed, was especially
hospitable to the strangers, since in his youth he had
visited Bohemia, or Alta Almania, and been admitted
to the dignity of an order of knighthood by King
Albert of Bohemia at the siege of Tabor (1438). As
a mark of esteem, therefore, he conducted them to a
cloister built by his brother, formerly Bishop of Burgos,
and displayed to their wondering eyes a series of
magnificent tombs which had already been erected for
himself, his parents and his numerous kin.

The onward way led south through a wilderness
blossoming with rosemary and ‘ a flower like unto the
rose,’ which turned only too soon into a hideous and
desolate wa^te, wherein they suffered great hardships
and went ever in fear of their lives. Constant and
unsleeping must now be their vigilance, for neither
persons nor property were safe by day or by night.
They dared not attempt to journey on the new
highway but took the straightest and most secluded
line ; and even then ‘ must ride quickly, for the heathen
were about.’ They were sorely troubled also by the

^ According to Madame d’Aulnoy the Spanish nuns ‘ see more
cavaliers than the women who live at large, neither are they less
gallant; it is impossible for any to have more gaiety than they,
and, as I have already told you, madam, here are more beauties
than are seen abroad^

70 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

inhospitality of the people, who were ‘ arrogant, angry,
jealous, suspicious and cruel,’ and wholly reckless of
life, whether their own or another’s. Spittings and
stone-throwings were everywhere their only welcome.

‘ If we came to towns or markets they would give us
no lodging, so that we must needs abide in the open
fields under the sky. If we wished to buy drink or
bread or otherwhat, we had first to pay the money,
and then they gave us but bath-warm wine that had
been brought in goatskins and on mules over the
mountains.^ For bread they gave us flour weighed
by the pound, whereon we poured water and made
a fagatzon, cooking it in the hot ashes.’ Often they
were reduced to dry dung alone.® Of the horses’ -
fodder it was the same story, ‘ so that I think,’
groans Tetzel, ‘ that the gypsies in all countries
were lordlier entertained than w^.’ The heat, again,
was terrific, and, like many other travellers, the
Bohemians cursed the brazen sky, the blinding sun
and the adusted soil of Spain. On one occasion they
were completely lost and wandered for hours — drink-
less, despairing and crying upon death — in a forest of
giant pine-trees, from which they were eventually
rescued by the friendly offices of a priest.

Spain, indeed, was at that time a land of ‘ war and
unrest,’ singularly unsuited to peaceful or pious
travel. For the country was crossing one of the most
tumultuous and turbulent periods of her uneasy

^ ‘ All your wyne shalbe kepte and caryed in gote skyns, and the
here syde shalbe inwarde, and you shall draw your wyne out of one
of the legges of the skyne. Whan you go to dyner and to supper,
you must fetch your bread in one place, and your wine in a nother
place, and your meate in a nother place ; and hogges in many places
shalbe vnder your feete at the table, and lice in your bed.*
(Boorde.) These hog or goat skins were both barrel and cellar,
wrote Van Aarssens ; ‘the best wine out of these is a very unpleasant
liquor, having a most abominable taste of pitched hide.*

* This must have been especially trying to these particular travellers,
for Bohemians are described by Butzbach as incomparable eaters and
drinkers : ‘the richer, like the Epicureans, are for the most part so
fat that they are compelled to support their protruding persons with
bands fastened round their necks.

CIVIL WAR

career, and the noise of battle was ever at her gates.
It was the decade immediately preceding that of the
advent of the Catholic Kings. Both in Aragon and
in Castile there were two sovereigns, or would-be
sovereigns. In Aragon John II., poor and unscrupu-
lous, was ever at issue with the many claimants for
the throne of Navarre ; while here in Castile the fatuous
and despicable Henry IV. was fighting for his crown
with the adherents of his boy-brother Don Alfonso.
‘There were at that time,’ says the Nuremberger,
‘ two brothers against each other, and each brother
would be king in Spain, and part of the country held
with the old and part with the young.’ Nor had this
civil war been undertaken without ample and even
equitable cause. Four years had already passed since
Henry’s Queen, the volatile Juana,^ had brought into
the world— and this despite the acknowledged im-
potency of her husband — an Infanta, the apparent
heiress to the ancient throne of Castile. Yet Henry,
with the perversity that distinguished him, still
insisted not only on recognising the little interloper
as legitimate, but also on loading her reputed father,
Beltran de la Cueva, with wealth and honours.*
When the remonstrances of his outraged nobles
proved of no avail, a considerable portion of them,
under the leadership of the Archbishop of Toledo, had
raised the banner of rebellion in favour of his young
half-brother. The war had already lasted for a year
with alternating fortunes — success being rendered
difficult to the one party by the poverty and pusilla-
nimity of the King, and to the other by the conflicting
ambitions and jealousies of the nobles. And Castile
and our Bohemians remained the sufferers.

^ Sister of Alfonso of Portugal and of the Empress Eleonore, and
second wife of Henry. Her daughter was commonly called ‘the
Beltraneja,’ from the name of her alleged father.

® Commynes, in narrating the meeting of Louis XL and Henry IV.
in 1463, describes King Henry as a ‘simple man doing nothing of
himselfe, but wholy governed by the great Master of Saint Jame§
[Beltran de la Cuev^ and the Arghbishop of ToIedQ.’

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Having vainly applied to an adherent of ‘ the young
King,’ the travellers were passed angrily on to a
follower of ‘the old King,’ and succeeded at length
in finding the lawful monarch in a small village out-
side Segovia. Henry, whose cherished delight lay
in the reek of manure, gave them a short audience,
‘ sitting on the ground in heathenish fashion,’ but
preferred to receive them properly in the city of
Olmedo. So thither they went, visiting on the way
the gorgeous Alcazar or Castle of Segovia, which
had been magnificently restored by King Henry but a
few years before and was now ‘ surpassingly elegant,
adorned with gold and silver and that coerulean blue
colour that is called azure,’ having for its floors and
doors slabs of the fairest alabaster. ‘ Here in that
Palace are certain images of the Kings, who from
the beginning of the kingdom have reigned in order.
There are four-and-thirty effigies to be seen, all ■ of
them fashioned of pure gold, each seated alone on a
King’s throne, holding in his hand the sceptre and
fruit. And all the Kings of Spain are bound by this
law, that during their reign, they should gather and
heap up as much gold as shall equal the weight of
their bodies, that life having passed they may find
a place among these other Kings in the Palace of
Segovia.’ ^ In the rooms wherein the Sovereign was
wont ‘ to capture sleep ’ the ceilings blazed with solid
gold, while the hangings of the bed were woven with
gold and had cost their possessor 1,700 good French
crowns. So militant were the times and so fearful
the'Segovians, that the visitors were only admitted
into the Palace in batches of five. They also saw
Henry’s new Franciscan monastery, rich with the
curious work of sculptors and set with cypresses and
flowering trees. And they looked with fear at the old

^ ‘ Those victorious in battle hold their swords naked and straight,
those discomfited hold them lowered ; one of the kings holding three
dice in his hand, lost his kingdom by dice to a gentleman, who was
king for all his life, whereafter the kingdom returned to the true
heirs.* (De Lalaing.)

ENRIQUE n

Roman aqueduct : ‘ a bridge too high and steep to be
crossed save on foot,’ which had been built by the
devil in a single night, only a short time before.^

In Olmedo — or, according to Tetzel, ‘Gerbirro’ —
they succeeded in obtaining another audience from
Henry, and again found both King and Queen seated
in Moorish fashion on the ground.® The monarch,
indeed, seems to have shared his subjects’ taste for the
ancestral enemies of Castile. ‘ He has many of them
at his Court, and has driven forth many Christians
and given over their lands to the heathen. Moreover
he eats and drinks and prays and is apparelled after
the manner of the Paynims, and is the enemy of Christ,
and has committed a great crime, and is given over to
unchristian practices.’

Despite his lowly posture, the King greeted the
embassy politely, giving them all his hand : ‘ and all
that my lord desired he granted.’ The Queen, like the
citizens of London, ‘ had a great amazement over our
hairs. She is a brown and comely lady, and the King
is her enemy and lives not' with her : so is she also the
enemy of the King, for it is said that he is unable to
have aught to do with her. But he also commits great
follies. And for these reasons, and because he has
driven forth the Christians and taken their lands and
castles and cities' and given them to the heathen,
therefore the country has elected his brother as
King.’

The Bohemians seem to have been by no means
beloved at Henry’s court, having many a skirmish
and encounter with both Spaniards and Moors, who
intruded themselves even into Lev’s chamber. ‘ For

^ ‘There is a bridge which the devil, called Hercules, made in
one day, without lime and without sand, 400 feet in height, as long as
one French leagu^ and it has double arches, and there flows above
and along it a spring, which serves all the city with water. It is an
admirable thing and strange to see/ (De Lalaing.)

* Even in the reign of Philip V., Saint-Simon found the ladies of
Spain still sitting cross-legged on the floor. (Mdmoires,} Lady
Fanshawe describes them as seated ‘upon cushions, as the fashion of
this court is, being very rich and laid upon Persian carpets/ {Memoirs,)

74 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

they run when they please by force even into the
King’s presence, and he must needs permit them.
They have the King in their power, and the King
has no authority over them.’ ‘They lead,’ adds
Schaschek, ‘so impure and unnatural a life that
it irks and offends me to narrate their enormities.
Indeed, it may truthfully be said of them that there
is nothing like to this town in all Castile. ... If one
of us goes forth from his lodging, so fall they upon
him, spitting and practising other affronts, seeking
a pretext to take from us our possessions, or even
to murder us. And if you ask which are the best.
Moors or Christians ? I shall not easily say.’ ^ On one
occasion, when Zehrowitz indiscreetly touched the
neckerchief of a pretty damsel, four hundred angry
Spaniards attacked the hostelry wherein the Bohemians
lodged; and only the prompt interference of the King
saved them from annihilation. Again, at a wrestling
match that took place in their honour, when Zehrowitz
was first victorious over and then defeated by the
Spanish champion, the tumult and clamour of the
populace rose to a fierce and even alarming degree.
This Spaniard, though small in stature, was possessed
of such monstrous strength that, though clad in full
armour, he could run for six miles and beat all other
men in ordinary clothes. Placing his hand on Zehro-
witz's shoulder, he vaulted, with feet together, right
over his head ; whereat Jan exclaimed, ‘ Never, by
Hercules ! had I thought to find so great strength in
so little a man.’

The Bohemians here also beheld another of the
horrible punishments so common at that time, especi-
ally in Southern Europe. A Spanish grandee, who
had conspired against the King, was taken in his gold-

^ At the conference of the He de Faisans in 1463, Henryks guard
were ‘ all Moores of Granada and some of them Negros/ who at once
‘fell togither by the eares ’ with their new allies. (Commynes.) ‘ In
no court have I seen such foolish mad rude folk as here/ wrote Niklas
Poppel in 1470,

LEON

emblazoned dress of state and bound to a pillar,
when as many as chose shot at him with their
crossbows.^ The right breast was the target. Those
who missed had to pay the fine of a Spanish dollar,
but those who succeeded in hitting the mark were
rewarded with four-and-twenty maravedini. And
the proceeds of the fines were devoted to feasting and
merriment. -

All things considered, it seemed prudent to leave
Olmedo, and the travellers took their departure from
this dreary city of battles and bloodshed. Greatly
disgusted with ‘ the old King,’ who had not even
defrayed their expenses, and had given them nothing
save a useless Order® and the very Spanish recom-
mendation to have patience, they decided to make
the acquaintance of the young one. Alfonso, how-
ever, wholly declined to receive as guests any who
had been entertained by his brother, so they were
forced to steer their course towards Portugal.

A fertile district of Leon, radiant with harvest-fields
and vineyards, brought them to Canta la Piedra. And
here, to their interest and surprise, they found an aged
and saintly hermit, with a long white beard and six
toes to his foot, said to be that Ladislas L, King of
Poland and Hungary, whom men commonly supposed
to have been killed in battle by the Turks at Varna.
One of the party, himself a Pole, having gazed upon

* * They do not often hang people in Spain, but they tie evil-doers
worthy of death to a stake, and they place a mark of white paper in
the region of his heart Then the law orders the best arblasters that
may be found, to draw upon him till death ensues. And if the
criminal knoweth that one of his friends is a good arblaster, he prays
the judge to let him draw, that he may die the quicker,' (De LaJaing.)
Hence the old Castilian proverb : * Let every man look out for the
arrow.'

* Ehingen received three Orders from the King of Castile : ‘ The
Spanish \della Squamd), that is a neck-chain, broad and scaly, like
unto great scales of fish. . . , La banda de KasttlUa^ that is a red
scarlet coat with a golden hand or riband, two thumbs broad, over the
left shoulder, across the front to the edge of the coat on the right side,
and from the said place across the back up again to the left shoulder.

. , . That of Granada : a pomegranate cloven in twain, with a stalk
and sundry leaves thereto,'

76 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

the said toes, fell on his knees and did reverence to
the hermit as his King. But the aged man only spoke
with humility of his sins, and, wrapping about him his
long mantle of ashen grey, ‘ turned weeping into his
abode.’

Salamanca, the chief University of Spain, was the
next stage, and royally did the Bishop, ‘ a strong
God-fearing man,’ receive them. Once again a bull-
fight was enacted before them, this time in honour
of the holy James; but, despite the patronage of this
erstwhile daunter of monsters, two men were killed
and eight wounded. The lords and knights, writes
Tetzel, ‘ even the mightiest in the town, sat upon their
jennets \_gatnretten\, right quick-running horses, and
hurled little lances at the bulls; and whoso shot
straightest and implanted most spears, he was the
best. And they enraged the bulls, so that these chased
after them and attacked them fiercely, and on that
same day were two carried away for dead.’ When
the bull-baiting was at an end, the caballeros made
for each other and shot with the little spears, inter-
cepting them with their shields, or catching them,
‘ as the heathen use to do when they fight : and in all
my life I have never seen more nimble men or horses.’
They rode very short, with the knee drawn up to
the saddle, also like the Moors. The spectacle was
witnessed in comfort by the Northerners : ‘ my lord
and we were in a house with other burghers and looked
on, and we had beautiful women by us, and drank and
ate and lived well.’ With proper zeal and an admirable
sense of contrast they subsequently visited the ‘ high
school,’ ‘and they say that in all Christendom there
are no more learned folk than in the said town.’
And they inspected the gallows in the market-place
whereon the domestic thieves were hung,- all foreigners
being privileged to end their Hives without the city
walls.

Having stayed for a few days with the Bishop of
Ciudad Rodrigo, and having wondered both at the

PORTUGAL

hordes of locusts ^ that were devastating the land and
at the host of storks that were hastening through the
air to devour them, the Lord Lev and his company
now crossed the Douro into Portugal.

The face of Portugal seemed at first no more smiling
than that of Spain. For before the wanderers lay a
stricken and almost trackless country, wherein ‘ often
for the space of four or five years no stranger is
seen.’ Indeed, they found in it more serpents,
scorpions and lizards than inhabitants, and of these
discomforting hosts Schaschek gives an astonishing
description. The serpents or dragons were short and
thick, with forked tongues and wings like bats, where-
with they could pursue men or animals for the space
of two leagues. The scorpions were many coloured
and of the size of ordinary hunting dogs. Even the
lizards were not much smaller and of a greenish hue.*

^ Mariana records that in 1466 ‘there appeared such a multitude of
Locusts that they hid the Sun, Every one interpreted this and the
like Prodigies as his Fear dictated, rather than according to any
Reason.’ Locusts were still sorely dreaded in Europe, both for their
destructiveness and as the certain forerunners of pestilence. The
Golden LegendX^Ci^ of a plague that was heralded by ‘brezes or locustes
innumerable, whiche had syxe wynges, syxe longe feet, and two teeth
harder than ony stone, and fledde by companyes, as armed men, by
the space of a day^’s journey, stratching a four myle or fyve myle
brode, and they devoured ad thyng that was grene in trees and in
herbys, . , . And therof ensued a grete famyne and grete mortalyte,
that almoste the thyrd parte of the peple perysshed and dyed.’

® ‘ Caballero, there is not another such range in Spain ; they have
their secrets, too — their mysteries. Strange tales are told of those
hills : it is said that in certain places there are deep pools and lakes,
in which dwell monsters, huge serpents as long as a pine tree, and
horses of the flood, which sometimes come out and commit mighty
damage.’ (Borrow, Bible in Spain,) Compare, too, the English
knight’s adventures in the mountains of Aragon {Rojnans de Partenay^
ed. Skeat), where all must go quickly and without resting, since there
was no place to sit down save upon^ snakes — ‘ enlesse uppon serpentes
sate truly’ — and where the monsters that beset ‘the sory path’ were
* of unmete hugenesse ’ and * above all other wormes most perilous.’

78 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Throughout the day the baleful beasts remained hidden
in holes and caves, but so soon as the heat abated
they came forth and pervaded the land ; so the un-
fortunate Bohemians were forced to pursue their
laborious way under the ‘ parboyling beams ’ of the
noonday sun.

Beyond this home of horror, however, stretched the
chestnut and fruit-laden valleys of Villa Ponca, and
their aching eyes and parched mouths were refreshed
by the abundance of ‘sea-strawberry trees’ (^qiioe
fraga marina nuncupaniur'), almonds, figs and grapes —
‘ which at home we call Greek wine ’ — that decked
their path.^ Soon, too, through a strangely varying
landscape, they came to Braga, and were amply repaid
for their toils by the bounteous hospitality of Alfonso V.,
sometimes called ‘the African,’ to whom they had
brought confidential letters from his sister, the
Empress Eleonore.

For the gentle, chivalrous King of Portugal was a
sovereign of a very different mould from his brother-
in-law, Henry of Castile. Known to the world as
‘el Rey Caballero,’ he surrounded himself by the
most valiant and famous knights ofhis dominion, while
his court had for years been the gathering-place of the
enterprising adventurers who, under the patronage of
his uncle Prince Henry, were sailing far and wide ‘ to
learn the world.’ ‘ He was a comely personable
prince,’ wrote Jorg von Ehingen, when visiting him a
few years earlier, ‘ and the most Christlikest, honour-
ablest and justest King that I have ever known.’ In
his youth he hid been greatly addicted to all chivalrous
, sports, and hi§ Court was always gay with ‘ dancing,
hunting, leaping, wrestling, throwing tjie stone and
the iron bar, racing with horses and jennets, feasting
and banketting: in truth it was good to be there.’

^ A faire contraye, and vinez also,

The Raspis groeth ther in thi waie.

Yf thee lust thou maie asaie.

(The ‘ Musical Pilgripi.^

ALFONSO THE AFRICAN 79

Yet Alfonso’s career was an ineffectual one. Primed
and panoplied with knightly ideals, he dreamed the
years away in vain alluring visions of Portuguese
supremacy and revenge. Till the day of his final
disillusionment, the throne of his brother-in-law of
Castile was the unfading star of his ambition,^ while
his soul could not rest within him till he had wiped
the stain of Tangier® from the annals of Portugal.
And neither of these ardent ambitions was destined
to success.

When the Bohemians arrived at Braga he was a sick
man. ‘ He rode and walked very badly,’ writes
Tetzel, ‘ for he was at that time suffering.’ He was also
difficult of access, since so soon as the sun rose he
lay within, and only after sunset rode with his lords
and knights round about the place till midnight. But
he treated the visitors with the greatest consideration,
knowing well, he told Rozmital, ‘ what so great a
journey betokens : for ever it means foundered horses,
tired riders, and an empty purse.’ He was dressed
after ‘ the Spanish or heathenish fashion,’ wearing
boots to the knee; his sword was slung round his
neck by a broad band, and his cloak was thrown over
his shoulder as was the custom in the country.

Of Braga itself the scribes have little to tell, save
that the town walls were covered with ivy, and that
the city was a very garden of orange and lemon trees,
of pomegranates, and of apples of Paradise. But they
were exceedingly astonished by the trade in African
slaves that was then a marked feature of Portuguese
life. The King possessed at this time three cities on
the Moorish coast — Alcagar Quivir, Alcazar Ceguer
and Ceuta ; and if any man in Portugal were condemned
to death or guilty of crime, he was at once sent to these

' In the hope of attaining this end he finally married his niece, the
Beltraneja.

‘ His uncles King Edward and Don Ferdinand, sons of Philippa of
Lancaster, suffered a terrible reverse at Tangier in 14^, the younger
inrince, known as ‘ the Constant;’ being left as hostage in the hands of
ri»e Moors, where he died after six years of a cruel captivity.

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

towns to fight the infidel. In the adjacent country
also were many subject Kings, whose tribute con-
sisted in the sacrifice of one out of every three children
born in the kingdom. If the father had influence, he
could ransom his child for money ; but were he poor,
he must yield it up. The small victims were collected
every year by each King in his own province, and sold
— either immediately or when of full age — to the
Portuguese merchants. These bought them very cheap,
marked them and carried them across the water in
their ships and galleys. ‘ And for a kerchief that is
worth ten or twelve florins one shall receive five or
six Moors, for there is a great lack of kerchiefs in the
country.’ The numbers and sufferings of the poor
wretches may be gathered from the fact that ‘ in one
disturbance in a passage over to Lisbon, it is said that
over three thousand Moors and Mooresses died.’ The
common people went all naked' and bare,^ the women
wearing a piece of wood and a cotton band, but the
more distinguished wore ‘ narrow- garments of cotton.’
The women of Alkasser were all adorned with a blue
stripe over the chin, such as were noble having their
bodies above the girdle ‘ stained with lovely flowers.’
They drank no wine, but lived chiefly on fruit and
the suga^r of canes. ‘ And here is to be found the most
precious gold that can be upon earth.’

In spite of their disgust, the Bohemians received
with proper gratitude the King’s parting present of
two slaves, coupled with two elegant jennets — ‘ a kind
of horse which for swiftness and lightness surpasseth
all the horses of Christendom,’ — two monkeys,® many

^ The Morez ben blak as any pikke,

And go allemest naket, no men like.

(The ‘ Musical Pilgtim.')

The Moors of Barbary, says Schaschek, were known by their
painted {j>icturaid) bodies, and those converted to Christianity by their
beards, besmeared with colours which might never be washed off
* Monkeys were popular pets m Germany. A courtesan, wrote
Garzonus, must ever have something by her to attract the eye, ‘ so
one sees her not only magnificent in silk and gold and pearl-em-
broidered gloves, but also round her neck a costly sable hood, on the

GALICIA

leopard skins and heathen weapons, and sundry other
gifts. In fact, according to Schaschek, the Lord Lev,
when given his choice of a farewell gift, himself
named ‘two Ethiopians’ as the culmination of his
desires, and the brother of the King,^ who stood near,
burst into laughter at the modesty and cheapness
of his request.

To counterbalance this heterogeneous addition to
their party, that most necessary person the master-
cook unfortunately lost himself in the town and did
not reappear till they reached Compostella. Every
man of them therefore must set to and help, both with
the foraging and the cooking. ‘ Some ran and caught
a sheep, others had to skin it ; some made the fire and
cooked, some fed the horses : my lord as much as the
others. And we led a wretched and miserable life.’
Wonderful, indeed, must have been the capability and
value of the man who, on ordinary occasions, performed
these multifarious duties single-handed.

Eager to reach their sacred destination, the party
now rode quickly northward, not without anxiety
from the reports which reached them of tumults in
Galicia. At first, little of interest occuired, save that
between Tuy and Redondella they were, amazingly
enough, ‘ shown to our right the kingdom of Scotland,®

one side of her in the window a monkey or an ape, on the other
side a martin, and in her hand a sumptuous fan.’ {Schauplatz der
Kunste, in Scheible’s Kloster^ vi.) There are many to be seen in
the pictures of Israel von Meckenen, Albrecht Durer, Burgkmair,
and others.

^ Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, murdered by John the Perfect in 1484.

® The Latin translator of Schaschek provides the illuminating com-
ment that Ireland is here intended; drawing his information presumably
from such writers as Sebastian Munster, who describes that country as
situated between England and Spain, and its inhabitants as closely
allied both in history and in habits with the Spaniards, * who are their
nearest neighbours.’ ‘ The Hand hath by some bin tearmed Scotia
because the Scotti, comming from Spaine, dwelt here,’ writes Heylyn.
Compare also the shape of Western Europe in the Maps at the end.
But Schaschek had already, on leaving England, made an allusion to
the country of * the holy Patritius ’ : ‘ That part of the island which
lieth against England belongs to the English Crown, but the remainder
is ruled by two Earls, who are tnbutary to the King of England.’

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

which lies in the sea over against England.’ These
Scots had waged rebellious war against England for
countless years, and were subject not to a King but
to a Duke, ‘whom also we saw.’ But in the great
forest of chestnut-trees between Pontevedra and El
Padron the embassy, which was now dutifully con-
cluding its pilgrimage on foot, embarked upon an
adventure that was to have perilous consequences.
For a certain boy (apparently a son of Lev) sought
to imitate the natives and to slay wild beasts with a
sling and small stones ; and having presently wounded
with his pebble a peasant who was sleeping in the
bushes, the man, enraged, threatened to make the
Bohemians pay for this feat with their lives. They
soothed him with soft words and passed on their way,
but the incident was not at an end.

In El Padron the Bohemians began to realise their
near neighbourhood to the holy goal of their desires.
For here, for the space of twelve months, had lived
the holy apostle St. James the More, preaching the
gospel to the infidels of Galicia. This sojourn, indeed,
had to the Saint himself seemed a grievous failure,
since for all his beautiful sermons, as Tetzel sym-
pathetically tells, he had in all his whole life no more
than two converts only. This lamentable fact had,
however, been the cause of a miracle, whereof the
effects were still to be seen and tasted. For one day,
being burdened with sorrow, the holy man had gone
three bowshots from his church on to a little hill, and
had sat him down and bitterly wept and wailed that
he had changed two Pagans only: ‘ and this gave him a
strong thirst’ Moreover, the obdurate and stiff-necked
heathen had fallen upon him with sticks and stones,
and the pain of his wounds had rendered his desire
for drink wellnigh unbearable. Too weak to move,
he had prayed that God would come to his help, and
had then driven his staff with resolution into the earth.
Instantly .a ‘ lovely quick fountain ’ had spouted forth
with sufficient violence even to turn a mill-wheel, and

FOOTSTEPS 83

since that day had never ceased to spring or to refresh
its innumerable visitors.

In El Padron also was the stone on which the
mutilated body of the Saint — Herod had removed his
head, says Schaschek, with a sickle {fake messorid ) —
had been floated over the sea from Palestine to Spain,*
still bearing ‘ as though in wax ’ the miraculous im-
press of the holy form. By command of the Pope
it had been sunk under the waters of the River Sar,
to prevent its total destruction by the relic-loving
pilgrims who constantly broke and carried off great
pieces; but it was still plainly visible. Here, again,
was the cave that had once sheltered the Apostle from
the clutches of the heathen, a lurking-place of tempting
but deceptive proportions, in which J an of Zehrowitz,
who was possessed of a portly personality, came near
to strangulation. And, finally, near here was the
grim castle of Rotya Planta, in which, at the same
sacred date, had lived and ruled the terrible and
infidel Princess Lupa, who ordered her subjects —
and especially the Christians — to her liking by the
effective means of a dragon and two wild bulls.
When the disciples prayed her for a span of draught
oxen to convey their precious burden to the site
indicated by the attendant star, she offered them ‘ in
guile and mockage’ these gentle auxiliaries. But to
the amazement as well of the Queen as of an awe-
stricken peninsula, they suffered themselves with
eager acquiescence to be yoked, and brought the
body of the Saint in peace to his appointed resting-
place. ®

With high hearts and imaginations inflamed by

^ This is TetzePs account. Schaschek gives the usual version of the
story (cf. The Golden Legend ) : that St. Jameses body was brought
by his disciples on a ship steered by an angel and a star, and that it
had merely rested on this stone. Another legend makes the stone
serve as a ferryboat across the nver.

* Schaschelj?s version of this story is again almost identical with
that in the Legenda Aurea. It is interesting to remember that this
famous book was first printed in 1470— some four years after the
Bohemian pilgrimage.

84 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

these and many other legends, Rozmital and his
company now trod the hilly and arduous path that led
to Santiago di Compostella. So wearied were they
with their four-league climb that they sank with
alacrity under the welcome shade of the giant lime-
trees that sheltered another favourite fountain of St.
James. And, since the brackish waters of this spring
were for one whole year a certain remedy against
fevers, the entire company drank of them greedily.

Filled with new strength, they reached at last
the star-marked city, to find once more walls en-
garlanded with ivy and odorous with yellow violets,
but once more, also, a hurly-burly of battle and
sudden death. A certain Galician grandee, vassal of
the Archbishop of Santiago, had — after the fashion of
the day — arisen against his over-lord, with the intention
of possessing himself of the revenues and treasures
of the shrine. He had alre^idy seized many of the
episcopal castles and fortresses, and in one of them
held prisoner the Archbishop himself with twenty of
his priests.^ And now he was besieging the prelate’s
mother and brothers, of whom one was a cardinal, in
the Cathedral. ‘At that time,’ writes Tetzel, ‘there
was great warfare ; for before the church there lay a
mighty lord. With him were all they of Santiago, and
they had utterly beset the church; and they shot
therein with guns, and they in the church shot back
again.’ Lev sent forward Frodnar and Tetzel to ask
for a safe-conduct, and they arrived just in time to
take part in an assault on the Cathedral and to confer
a benefit upon the assailants. For foremost in the

^ Compostella seems to have been unlu^cky in her Archbishops.
‘Particularly the Clergy was extraordinary depraved/ .writes Mariana
of the year 1459, ‘in so much that about this time D. Roderick de
Luna, Archbishop of Santiago, forced away a Bride on her Wedding
Day to debauch her, which caused the People to mutiny, being headed
by D. Luis Osono, Son to the Earl of Trastamara. In revenge of that
hainous Crime they deposed that Bishop, and seized all he had.’ His
successor, this Archbishop Alonso da Fonseca, was chosen as being
the only man likely to strive successfully with Luis Osdtio, lyho had
‘ possessed himself of the Revenues of that Church.’

SANTIAGO

storming was the rebellious noble, and he was soon
so sorely wounded in the throat by an arrow that his
neck swelled up and he was like to die. None of
his own men could find or draw the iron, so that
when Frodnar stepped forward and made a plaster to
fetch it out, he won both gratitude and an immediate
escort. ‘And not one save this lord alone was
wounded, though there were over 4,000 men assaulting;
wherefore they held it was a punishment from God
and St. James.’

Rozmital now asked the captain of the besiegers
for leave to seek from his opponents admission to
the shrine ; and this was readily granted, though with
the encouraging comment that while entrance into the
Cathedral would surely prove easy, it was far from
equally certain whether they would ever come out
again alive. ‘ The church,’ added the warrior, * is held
by that Mother, a wicked woman, and her sons who
are like unto herself : nor is there any man of her
company whose word may be trusted. So I should
not advise you to enter.’ But the embassy was in-
trepid, and, after many days of negotiation, succeeded
in penetrating to the outer defences of the Cathedral,
where they were met in a conciliatory spirit by the
martial lady and her sons. There was, however, a
new difficulty to be faced before the Bohemians
might obtain a sight of the precious relics. ‘ Know
you not,’ said the Mother of the Church, ‘that you
are excommunicate? You have spoken with those
who are besieging us, and whoso speaks, eats or
drinks with them becomes a partner in their crime
and falls with them under holy ban.’ ‘ And it was
the almightiest ban,’ adds Tetzel, ‘ and we were sorely
afeared that we must depart away again.’ They
offered to leave Frodnar, the chief offender, outside ;
but even this would not suffice, and they were forced
to retire.

Again and yet again they returned to the charge,
and at length the hearts of the clerics allowed them-

86 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

selves to be softened, chiefly, indeed, ‘because they
hoped to receive great and goodly gifts ’ from the Lord
Lev. A cleansing ceremony was therefore arranged.
First, the combatants on either side, ‘to honour my
lord, made a peace together.’ Next, the visitors were
led to an empty cistern facing the church door, and
were told to take off their shoes — ‘to strip,’ says
Tetzel — and to kneel all in a row. Soon the Cardinal
emerged from the Cathedral, preceded by a great black
cross and followed by many priests and scholars, who
sang loudly at the culprits. Approaching the kneelers
and striking each of them a blow with his girdle, the
prelate then raised the Lord Lev, and led the little
company, still barefoot and bearing lighted torches in
their hands, within the holy edifice. Here they were
reshod by the Cardinal’s own eminent hands, and at
last, being voided of offence, were permitted to see
the sacred treasures of the shrine. It would appear,
however, that the Cathedral itself was far more in need
of a cleansing than were the visitors, since not only
was it inhabited by the warlike Mother, ‘ a long lean
withered woman,’ with all her household, garrison
and cooking arrangements, but also there were many
horses and cows stabled therein. None the less, con-
cludes Tetzel with a large tolerance, ‘ the people of
Compostella are verily a pious folk, albeit they happen
at this time to be against the Bishop and the Church.’

The building itself they describe as immense,^ with
four round' and two square towers. Amongst the innu-
merable relics of St. James, the most interesting were
the sickle with which he was beheaded * and his famous

1 ‘Hyt is a gret Mynstor, large and long,’ writes the ‘ Musical
Pilgrim.’ ‘Very strong and solid, in the form of a great keep or
castle, so covered that one may walk all over it,’ says De Lalaing.

® ‘ I dyd dwel m Compostell, as I did dwell in many partes of the
world, to se and to know the trewth of many thynges, and I assure
you that there is not one heare nor one bone of saint lames in Spayne
in Compostell, but only, as they say, his stafe, and the chayne the
whyche he was bounde wyth all in prisour and the syckel or hooke,
the whyche doth lye vpon the myddell of the hyghe aulter, the
whyche (they ’sayd) dyd saw and cutte of the head.’ (Boorde.)

FINISTERRE

banner, already falling into sore decay. This last
was ‘ of a red colour, and on it is painted his image,
seated on a white horse and clad in garments of
white. On the horse and on the head-dress of the
rider are to be seen painted shells or scales, such as
the pilgrims are wont to wear in their hats.’^ And
the priests instructed them that, when the holy James
defeated 100,000 Paynims with a force of but 13,000
Christians, he was dressed exactly thus. On the
walls of a little chapel were hanging the coats-of-arms
of many a noble pilgrim, a custom with which the Lord
Lev and his gallant companions duly complied.*

This holy task being at length accomplished, the
Bohemians pushed on to Capo Finis Terrae, ‘called
by the peasants, * the Cape of the Dkrk Star {Finster
Stern)' As they drew near, they beheld another
rock that strangely resembled ‘ a ship, with oars and
rudders, and all the appurtenances of the sea.’ And
this, they learned, was the very vessel whence Christ
and Our Lady had disembarked, when they came
hither to found in her honour the Church ‘ that is
known to this day by the name of the Stella Obscura.’
So soon as the Blessed Pair had quitted the ship,
it had turned to hardest stone.

At the famous ‘ end of earth ’ the wanderers found
ti^e greatest wonder of all — a limitless sea. From
this headland, says Tetzel, not without a touch of
poetry, ‘ one sees not aught an3rwhither save sky and
water : and men say that the sea is there so troubled
that none may sail upon it, nor know they what
may lie beyond.’ ‘The end of it no one knoweth
save God alone,’ writes Schaschek.

Yet both have legends of marvellous adventure
and strange sea-happenings to record. Since the
beginning of time Portugal had stared westward into

^ See Illustrative Notes, 17.

* Sebald Rieter describes the coats-of-arms as being painted on
vellum and hung up in the choir of the cathedral. {Re^buck,)

* ‘It is called finis terre^ end of earth. But the simple folk who
know not Latin think that finis terre means vinster stern} (Fabri.)

88 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

the boundless and immemorial mystery of a virgin
ocean, holding it to be the beached margent of
human existence, the ‘ great Water that departeth the
world asunder ’ : a perilous and impassable flood of
wracks and tempests, starred, indeed, with magical
islands and sheltering magical monsters, but leading
to no firmer shore than that of some phantom pays
du bleu, some dreamlike ‘Land of Behest tofore the
gates of God.’ But now, though six-and-twenty
years should pass before the first great enterprise
of Columbus, the whole country was teeming with
the new romance of discovery, hot with the lust for
new worlds. Prince Henry the Navigator was but
two years dead, and his captains and commanders,
spurred by large hopes and fruitful imaginings, were
still searching the southern seas ; while the whole
of Europe was busied with the dream of a peopled
land beyond the setting sun. An unknown but in-
habited isle had sprung, it was said, from the deeps at
the back of Madeira, only to vanish again into silence.
And the islands of the Azores spread rumours of naked
men cast, strange-featured and strange-tongued, upon
their coasts, who declared themselves to have come
from the vague, immeasurable spaces of the West.

So it was not surprising that the Bohemians should
have been fed with tales of the grim and lurid en-
chantment — of the woe and of the wonder — of this
dark, untravelled tide. ‘ Upon a time,’ records the
old Nuremberger, ‘ a King of Portugal prepared two
ships and two galleys, to the end that they should
sail over yonder, to see what might be there and
whether there were any land. The ships were
furnished for many years, and for three years were
they away; and no more than one galley came ever
home again. And on this galley were the greater
number of the crew dead. And they who yet were
alive, were so twisted and deformed, that they might
scarce be known for human folk; skin and hair had
fallen off, with the nails from their hands and feet, their

GREAT WATERS

eyes were sunk deep in their heads and they were
as black as the Moors. They told of the unspeakable
heat that was there, and how that it was no marvel
that the ship with its crew had been burned. And
they said that over yonder was neither dwelling nor
kingdom. Yet verily they had not been able to reach
the end, for the farther they had fared the fiercer had
raged the sea and the greater had waxed the heat.
And it was surmised that the other ships had driven
so far, that they could not return.’

Three ships went forth, chronicles Schaschek,
apparelled and provisioned for a four years’ voyage.
The crews were young and lusty as the dawn, and
with them went three times twelve scribes, who
should record all things that might befall. But after
two years there crept back to Lisbon ^ one vessel only,
manned by aged and enfeebled greybeards with
strange and fearful countenances. At first all had
gone well with them, they said. They had encountered
with gentle gales, and been driven to a gracious island
where the houses were of gold and silver and the
roofs of flowers. But, dreading some mystery of
magic and hot with yet higher hope, they had pressed
ever forward. And so they had come into the darkest
regions of the Ocean, and had beholden scenes of
horror and desolation as of the Last Day — ^the sky
and the sea fighting together, and the waters thick
and heaped up like unto mountains. So were they
all afraid with a great fear and sought to return. But
two of the vessels were taken by the great winds ;
and they came not ever again unto Lisbon, nor unto
the Cape of the Dark Star.*

^ Lisbon, writes Heylyn, is ‘ a famous City for traffique, the Portugals
in all their navigations setting to sea from hence. The Latine Writers
call it . . . Ulisippo, because as some say, Ulysses in his tenne yeares
travels comming hither, built it. But this is improbable, it being
nowhere found that Ulysses did ever see the Ocean.'

* Here evidently, in a new guise, is the famous legend of that * old
bewildered pilot of the seas’ who, early in the fifteenth century,
arrived in Lisbon babbling of tempests and the phantom island of the
Seven Cities. (Cf. Washmgton Irving, Wolferis Roost ^

go THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

But it was no purpose of the Lord Lev’s

To sail beyond the svmset, and the baths
Of all the western stars. . . ■

and his company now turned their faces southwards,
with the more prosaic intention of rejoining the King
of Portugal at Braga.

VII

Even this milder enterprise was not without its ex-
citements, and on their return to El Padron the
Bohemians heard of a startling and dramatic scene
that had occurred at Compostella during their brief
absence. The mighty lord who had been wounded at
the storming of the great church, and partially mended
by Frodnar, had none the less died. And hereupon
the city, led by the dead man’s kinsfolk and friends,
had risen in its wrath, snatched the Archbishop from
the comparative security of his prison, dragged him
before the Cathedral, and in the agonised sight of his
mother and brothers — even of the Cardinal — without
pity removed his head. So much for ‘ honest James’
and his satellites. Certainly the excellent Saint was
growing old.^

Soon, too, the pilgrims themselves were in urgent
peril of their lives. For, as they passed once more
through the great chestnut forest near Pontevedra
wherein the misadventure of their youthful David had
occurred, they were beset by nearly one hundred
Gallegos, all armed with swords, lances, crossbows
and slings, and furious to avenge the wrongs of their
countryman. The herald (presumably the seventeen-
tongued marvel of Burgundy) stepped forth to address
the angry horde, but matters looked black, for what

^ ^ Menedemus : Prithee tell me, How is the good man in health?
honest James, what does he do ? Ogygyus : truly, matters are

come to an ill pass with him, to what they were formerly. Menede-
mus : He’s grown old,’ (Erasmus, Colloquy of The Pzlgrimage.)

COURAGE

were thirteen men among so many an enemy? ‘ Beloved
friends,’ said Lev, ‘ye see that these folk desire our
ruin. Should the worst come to pass, let us valiantly
resist them and defend ourselves, for this is no place
for prayers. Wherefore if need demandeth and I
attack them, take heed and follow me. Should we all
be slain, the renown of us and the glory of our valour
shall yet live and be preserved for evermore.’ For-
tunately necessity did not demand this sacrifice to
endless fame. For the peasants suffered themselves
to be pacified, and in the end even escorted the
Bohemians in a friendly and thirsty manner to the
nearest hostelry.

In Pontevedra they collected those of the party who
had been left behind on the northward journey, and
once more in full strength made their way to Braga.
Here they found that the King had taken refuge at
Evora from a pestilence that was ravaging the country,
so, after a brief visit to two mighty Galician grandees
of the neighbourhood, who entertained them with
‘ many costly heathen dances ’ executed by ‘ mere
vain heathenish boys,’ they pushed on in pursuit.
Once more they rode through a desolate and plague-
stricken district, suffering much danger and discomfort
thereby ; and once more they met with ‘ great and
most ravenous worms,’ who, horribly flecked with
green and black, sprang out on the unheeding passer-
by and forthwith made an end of him.^ They arrived,
however, safely in the walled city of Evora, and
again received generous entertainment at the hands of
the Portuguese King. Of the town itself they have
little to say; but their curiosity was greatly excited
by Alfonso’s civet-cats {galladto), which were valued
at eight thousand gold pieces and produced a balm of
exceeding sweetness and efficacy. They noticed too

^ ‘Nothyng is more easye to bee founde, then bee barkynge
Scyllaes, ravenyng Celenes, Lestrigones, devourers of people, and
suche lyke great, and incredible monsters. But to find citisens ruled
by good and holsome lawes, that is an exceding rare and harde
th3mg.’ (More’s Utopia^.

92 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

with interest that in this fertile land the harvest was
reaped three months after the sowing, while the wine
of the country was so strong that it behoved them to
add water thereto.

Of the singular ways of the Portuguese people the
chroniclers have much to tell. The ordinary habits
of the priests seem to have closely resembled those of
Viscaya, but certain of their customs struck the wan-
derers as yet more strange, and have, indeed, a wild
and almost Eastern aroma. ‘ When one dies,’ writes
Tetzel, ‘ he is dressed in his most costly raiment and
borne publicly and high aloft to the church. After
the dead follow the women — a wife, sister or the
like. These wail and tear their hair, and claw at
their eyes till they bleed. And other women whom
they hire therefor also cry and claw. And when they
come to the church, there in the midst of it has a high
bed been raised, whereon the dead body is laid,
and the women stand round the bed, screaming and
scratching and plucking forth their hair. Then in the
church is a great fire made, where they offer up burnt-
offerings of wine and bread, with living calves and
sheep. Thereafter take they the dead and lay him
under the earth. Then come the women and fall on
to him in the grave; and the nearest friends are
standing by, who pull them out again and lead them
home to their houses.' All the friends of the corpse,
adds Schaschek, were clad in white and hooded like
monks, but the paid mourners were arrayed in black.
Their terrible and amazing cries more resembled the
bowlings of joy than of sorrow.^ The ceremony of
Inauguration was also a singular one. So soon as
the Mass had been read by the new priest, the whole
assemblage, priests and choristers, men, women and
children, all perambulated the streets to the sound of
trumpets, dancing and singing and crying aloud. And
then they had costly meals for two or three days and
lived well.

‘ See Illustrative Notes, i8,

LEGEND

After a fortnight’s stay in Evora the Bohemians
travelled eastwards through a high, wild country set
with fruitful and smiling oases. Passing lofty Estremoz,
they reached the frontier-town of Elvas, where they
were made to swear ‘a certain oath,’ quitted again
the comparatively peaceful Portugal for the sad and
war-driven Castilian district of Estremadura, and so
came to Merida : a great and desolate city, where
dwelt all together infidels, Jews, confessing Christians,
Paulicians, Greeks, and de la Centura, ‘ thus six creeds
in one and the same town.’

‘ As large as Rome,’ Merida was no less well filled
with ancient stones. Nor was this the lesser city’s
only link with the greater: for in olden days, adds
Tetzel, ‘Merida had disturbed Rome and Rome had
disturbed Merida.’ This was how it happened. There
was once on a time a great, dying in Rome: so soon
as any one yawned or sneezed, so was he dead.^ Now
there was a mighty Roman of royal race, the mightiest
man in Rome, and he had no children save one
daughter only, and her he sent to avoid the plague
in the town Merida. The maiden was about twelve
years old, and her father gave her many possessions,
built her a glorious palace and let her hold a splendid
court; so that she loved the town dearly, and no
longer wished for her native land. Soon many great
Kings came courting her, but she denied them all,
for she was very wise and had prudent counsellors.
But among the Kings there was one ‘of whom it
was said that he was the all-wisest and all-loveliest
man in all the realms of Christendom.’ And to him

^ Evidently the gpreat pestilence in the days of St. Gregory, ‘called
the botcbe of impedymye.’ This was ‘ cruell and sodayne, and caused
peple to dye : in goyng by the waye, in playing, in beyng atte table,
and in spekyng one with another sodeynly they dyed. In this manere
somtyme snesyng they deyed, so that whan ony persone was herd
snesyng anone they that were by said to hym : God helpe you, or
Cryst helpe: and yet endureth the custome.* {Golden Legend,)
Sir Thomas Browne in his chapter ‘ Of Saluting upon Sneezing ’
traces the ceremony back through the writings of Rome and Greece
to the rabbinical account of the special supplication of Jacob.

94 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

she secretly was drawn in love. Once she saw him
riding through the city, and her love grew greater.
Now, she had made known to her father in Rome
the courtship of the Kings, and he had counselled
her to choose the one whom she best loved. But
the maiden was very wise, and bethought her that
should she choose him, the others would suffer
humiliation. So she assembled a court, and to it
came all the great lords and princes. And she
set them a task. Three miles from the city was
a spring, and whoso should the quickest bring this
spring to her palace, he should be her husband. And
this she did, thinking that none was so wise as he
whom she loved. So this King built and a heathen
king built, and each thought he would be the first
to bring the water to the palace. And the Christian
King built much the quicker, and he was half a
mile ahead.

But the Paynim was cunning, and when the building
was almost finished he contrived to make the water
flow more swiftly through his course than it did
through that of the Christian. This the horror-
stricken maiden heard and saw, for she stood high
upon a battlement. ‘And hereupon she shuddered
so greatly for fear, seeing that she would by no means
marry that heathen, that she fell from the battlement
to death.’ The report reached Rome that they of
Merida had killed the damsel, so the two cities came
to war : ‘ and thus were they both disturbed.’

The great natural tunnel of the Guadiana — ‘the
greatest bridge of the world, whereon over 18,000
sheep are pastured,^ and over which an entire army
could march in order of battle’ — the aromatic herb-
strewn heath of Medellin, and the deer-filled forest
of Madrigallejo, brought the travellers to the rich

^ Navagero names this ‘bridge’ as the third great marvel of
Spam : ‘ at all times of the year more than 10,000 sheep feed thereon.
It is the country under which passes the Guadiana, when it is sub-
merged, and it stretches for seven leagues,’

OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE 95

and mighty Jeronomite Convent of Our Lady at
Guadaloupe. This famous cloister, the Loretto of
Central Spain, was set on a ‘wild and high hill’
at the boundaries (writes Schaschek, with a stretch
of imagination unusual to him) of Spain, France,
Navarre, and Portugal’ Though already vast and
magnificent, bigger than many towns, it was still
being enlarged by 600 workmen, the most of whom
were pilgrims. It had a yearly income of more
than 40,000 doubloons : ‘ In truth, I hold that if one
took two princes in German lands, they would not
possess so much as this monastery.’^ Among its
incomparable treasures and relics were a gold chalice
and monstrance so heavy with jewels that one man
alone could not lift them; a great rose-tree with
branches of solid gold — ^the gift of the King of
Portugal; and, over the high altar, a painting of
Our Lady and her Child by St. Luke, ‘ a lovely
serious picture for men to see.’ It was, indeed,
the discovery by some shepherds of this wonder-
working image that had determined the site of the
cloister, and the Blessed Mary had herself helped in
the building by carrying stones for the workmen.
Also in the church were an infinite multitude — ‘ more
than two hundred waggons could carry’ — of the
chains with which Christians had been held captive
by the infidels. The establishment consisted of a
hundred and fifty monks and fifty lay brothers, the
Superior being a German and the rule a strict one.
In every comer, in church, at table and over their
beds, they were confronted by the words ‘Ye shall
die’: ‘for always, whether he eats or sings in the
choir or lies down or stands up, this is what he must
industriously remember. And one sees many who,
thinking thereupon, weep aloud and bitterly.’

* ‘ The most beautiful place and the richest cloister of Spain. The
benches whereon the monks sit jure of cedar wood, well carved and
beautifully painted with divers paintings. The library is well furnished
with many beautiful books. There are full a thousand persons of
sundry trades who eat at the costs of the abbey.’ (De Lalaing.)

96 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

But the crown of Guadaloupe’s wonders was the
hospital, for here all humanity was welcomed and
nursed. ‘ If king, duke, earl, baron, knight or squire,
poor or rich, be ill and come to the said hospital,
so does he receive in costliness, according to his
rank, attendance and" all appurtenance, a room to
himself with a servant and maid, two sworn doctors
and apothecaries; and each one, poor or rich, is
according to his illness visited every day by the
doctors, and served with all service of cooks and
apothecaries, that I ween he is better furnished than
in his own house. And when he is healed, they give
him again that which he brought. And lacks he
provisionment, so is it given to him, and he may not
pay aught. But if he dies, that which he brought with
him remains in the hospital.’ In this convenient
asylum the three sick men of the party were accord-
ingly left, who in after-days, when safe back in
Bohemia, ‘told wonders’ of the generous treatment
they had received.

At Toledo, the ‘ ancient jewel ’ of Spain, they were
sumptuously entertained by Alfonso Carrillo, the
famous Archbishop and primate, ‘ as mighty a man as
could be seen in all Castile.’ This prelate, who enjoyed
an income of a thousand crowns a day, had played
a leading part in the humiliation of Henry IV., and
Tetzel tells at length the curious story of his master-
stroke of arrogance.' ‘ Item, the mighty rich Bishop
of Toledo was right angry that the old King had
such unchristian ways and companied with the
heathen. And on a time he assembled many bishops,
nobles and knights, both those who held by the old
King and those who held by the young.’ Having
caused a great tabernacle to be built in the market-
place of Toledo, he raised within it ‘ a figure made
and fashioned like the old King in his majesty in
the costliest manner. And over him was a label
telling that this was the old King of Spain.’ When
he had shown the puppet every possible honour.

CHRISTIANS AND MOORS 97

he read out to the assemblage the misdeeds of the
monarch, stopping at each article of the indictment
for a fitting penalty to be allotted and dealt. The first
cry of the audience was for the removal of the crown,
and the second for that of the sceptre; at the third
the ‘ apple of majesty ’ was taken away, at the fourth
the sword, at the fifth the spurs, and at the sixth the
robes of royalty. Finally, on the seventh count, the
image was cast down from its high seat and pierced
through the heart with its own sword. The prelate
himself played the part of executioner in each case.*
‘ And thus did the Bishop : he stuck the graven image,
as were it the King, through the heart with the
sword.’ The boy Alfonso was then placed on the
throne and invested with the royal emblems that had
been torn from the effigy of his brother.

Of the marvels of Toledo the travellers draw but
a scanty picture, mentioning little save the Cathedral
— ‘ so beautiful that even the heathen Moors had spared
it ’ — ^and ‘ the most precious Bible that existeth in all
Christendom.’ This was the famous gift of St. Louis.
‘ There are three great books : the text and the glosses
are written in golden letters, and on the other sides
are painted the pictures ; and it is said that it is by
the greatest painter that has ever been in the world.’®

They now fared forward through a land of ‘evil
gipsy-like Christians’ and of most hospitable and
religious heathen, whose ‘ churches ’ they visited with
interest and even respect, and found to be full- of
‘nothing but countless lights.’ Passing by Madrid,
then but a mean and meagre city, they came
into Aragon; and so presently to Saragossa, its
capital, where they found King John II., ‘a short
old man quite blind and beggarly poor,’ with his
second and more famous son, Ferdinand, later ‘the

^ TetzePs account is not quite correct. The ceremony took place
at Avila, and several nobles took part. Cf. Mariana.

* ‘ Three volumes in vellum, covered with cramoisy cloth of gold,
where all the J3ible is richly written and pictured.’ (De Lalaing.)

98 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

Catholic.’ This kingdom also was in the throes of a
bloody civil war, for the uncertain succession of
Navarre had proved a very cauldron of strife. Blanche,
Queen of Navarre in her own right and first wife of
Juan, had died in 1441, and her son Carlos, Prince of
Viana, had succeeded to the governorship of the little
kingdom. His claim, however, had been disputed by
his father and stepmother, and after long contention,
he had been imprisoned and done to death by poison.
Four other claimants to the throne had since been
disposed of by the masterful Queen (Juana Henriquez) ;
but the Duke of Calabria had been chosen in their stead
by the irrepressible rebels, and was now actively
engaged in hostilities against the royal troops.

No sooner had the Bohemians arrived at their inn
and alighted from their horses, than a number of
Aragonese nobles appeared to welcome them ‘with
honourable and humane wbrds.’ But the welcome
was accompanied by a searching catechism, and not
till the inquirers had been reassured by ‘ magnificent
letters of commendation,’ did they retire. Next day,
however, they reappeared, with urgent prayers that
Rozmital should make choice of a gift whereby King
John might display the warmth of his sentiments ; and
Lev, responding in terms of equally ardent affection
{amici charissimi), replied that, though it would become
neither himself nor his comrades to receive gold or
silver, they would gladly accept the royal Order of
Aragon.^ So on the fourth day they went to the
Court, and took part in an impressive ceremony of
investiture. The King himself hung the Orders about
the necks of the knights, then, laying his hands upon
their shoulders, adjured them to ‘ deserve this symbol
by constant prayer, by the fasting of the body and by
the giving of alms.’ Turning to Rozmital, he added
that with it went the full power of conferring the same
Order on any other valiant and noble men he chose,

^ Perhaps the Order De la Jara or of the Lily, the chain of which
was fashioned of pots of lihes and griffins.

ARAGONESE 99

‘even as though We, seated upon this throne, had
done it in person ; and this to the end of your life.’

The city of Saragossa they report to be ' the oldest
in Christendom,’ lying among lovely vineyards and
meadows of saffron and of rosemary, of cypresses and
of olive-trees. It had belonged, they learned, in olden
days to the heathen, but had been wrested therefrom
by the twelve princes of the royal race of France — by
that King of France, says the more accurate Schaschek,
‘from whom many princes and peoples draw their
origin.’* Now it was a mighty city of merchandise
and far-driving traffic. The new Cathedral had been
built by St. James with his own hands, the honour
having been granted to him as compensation for his
failure to convert one single infidel of Saragossa ; and
in it was the heaven-desceaded portrait, still in good
preservation, of Our Lady of the Pillar.

Passing by Lerida, a fair city of pomegranate
groves, the Bohemians struck into the ‘ poor ruined
wasted country’ of Catalonia. And here they were
encompassed by perils, since from Martorell to Los
Molinos del Rey the narrow path lay between vast
sea-marshes and overhanging crags, while the whole
district was so overrun ‘ by the mightiest robbers and
rogues, that for no instant were we sure of life or
limb.’ Nor did they emerge from these dangers with-
out bloody strife and a near likelihood of capture :
‘ and then had we all been sold to a galley or made into
cappalagotz' One of the party, indeed, was taken by
the pirates and, being left in their clutches, presumably
saw his own mountain land no more. Schaschek him-
self, having lingered behind the company, was seized
by two of the robbers. They sought first to abduct
and then to drown him, and had it not been for the
determination of Zehrowitz and his comrades, who

‘ The twelve paladins were all dead at Roncesvalles before Clnurle-
magne won Saragossa. De Lalaing describes the Aljaferia as_ ‘ an
ancient castle of Saracen worl^ embellished within with fine lodgings,
beauti^ chambers and galleries, wherein the twelve fathers of France
were sold by Oanelon to the heathen king.’

lOO

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

crept through the feet of the pack-mules to his succouj-,
both he and his chronicle would assuredly have been
lost to the world.

And even in Molinos del Rey matters were not much
better. For as they were resting peacefully in their
hostelry, a ‘ certain man, valid and robust,’ entered and
challenged them to a wrestling match. Zehrowitz
promptly threw him, but, matters being thereafter
ordered ‘in Catalan fashion,’ the Bohemian was in
his turn defeated. The Spaniard then withdrew, but
at three in the morning the travellers were awakened
by a savage cry that resounded through the city.
The inn was now foimd to be surrounded by an armed
mob, and once more the little party peized their
weapons and prepared for death. But again the
assailants, alarmed at their warlike appearance,
hesitated and proposed a parley. Four hidalgos were
then admitted into the hostelry, and besought the
Lord Lev not to be troubled or disturbed, telling him
how the matter had arisen. That military man
militaris), they declared, who came to the ,inn and
wrestled, had been found later in the company of a lady-
burgess and summarily dispatched by her husband.
And now this murderer was supposed to have taken
refuge in the posada. The Bohemians were relieved,
but remained sceptical even after the withdrawal of
the mob. ‘ The Catalans,’ concludes Schaschek, ‘ are
the most perfidious and scoundrelly folk of all the
earth : professing to be Christians, they are worse than
the heathens. Three provinces of the Paynims did we
traverse, and were safer than among the Catalans.’ ^

^ Compare Cornelius Agrippa^s curious experiences among this
turbulent people. ( Vie et (Euvres^ Aug. Prost.) Swinburne, on the
other hand, prefers the Catalans to any other natives of Spam,
declaring them to be brave and indefatigable, while ‘ their honesty,
steadiness, and sobnety entitle them to the confidence of travellers.’
Cervantes, with a fine arrogance, describes their chief city as ^the
archive of courtesy, the shelter of strangers, the hospital of the poor,
the chastiser of ofenders, the native place of the brave.* The pass-
port given by the Catalans is the only one written in the dialect of the
country and not in Latin.

CATALANS

lOI

Not without trepidation, the embassy now arrived
in that mighty but uproarious city of merchandise,
Barcelona, where ' is much trafficking with all
countries and marvellous great trade across all the
seas. And it is said that they of Barcelona have as
many ships as the Venetians.’ The city had been
devoted to the cause of the murdered Prince of Viana.
Indeed, it was from here that Carlos went to his death,
having taken refuge at Barcelona from John II.’s
attempts to make him marry a kinswoman of his
stepmother. ‘ And his father had sent after him,’
says Tetzel, ‘ and prayed him sorely to return, and
had sent him a written safe-conduct And he asked
counsel of those of Parsolon, and they advised him
to go, the more that the safe-conduct was in writing.
So he went to his father, who sought again to force
him to marry a wife from Kastilia. And he would not
do so. Wherefore the father took him prisoner, despite
the safe-conduct, and since he still would not have the
wife, the stepmother went thither and poisoned him
in the prison, that he died.’ Barcelona, in wrath and
dismay, elected in his stead Pedro, Duke of Coimbra
and Constable of Portugal, and on the death of this
prince — also, it was said, from Aragonese poison —
the Duke of Calabria. Now, therefore, when the
town councillors learned that Lev had brought them
letters from King Ren6 of Anjou, they received the
Bohemians with great friendliness and honour ; though
even so the innkeeper admonished them that it was
never advisable to go out into the streets except in a
strong party : ‘ for there are many pirates about, who
privily seize people, embark them, enchain them, and
sell them like cattle.’ The tomb of Dom Pedro of
Portugal, the late King, was duly displayed, so many
miracles being daily performed thereat that the Pope
had been compelled to declare him a saint. The young
son of Dom Pedro was also brought to the inn to be
introduced to the visitors.

The surroundings of Barcelona seem to have been

102 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

chiefly remarkable for the vast number of date-palms
wherewith they were bespread.^ A King of France,
so ran the excellently moral legend, when travelling
in Catalonia, had discovered an ancient man engaged
unremittingly in the planting of date-kernels. ‘ Why,’
he asked, ‘ do you sow the seeds of a tree of such
tardy growth, seeing that the dates will not ripen till a
hundred years be passed ? ’ The answer was a noble
one : ‘ Am not I then eating the fruit of trees planted
by my forefathers, who took thought for those who
were to come ? And shall not I do like unto them ? ’
The monarch was so struck by the greybeard’s de-
votion and , industry that he removed him and his
entire family to France, and ennobled them. And the
Lord Lev had seen his descendants, living as counts
at the French Court.

VIII

At lengtii the moment came for the travellers to turn
their faces towards Italy and the East, and cross-
ing that land of dispute, the county of Roussillon,’
they arrived without great interest or adventure in
Languedoc. But the pestilence was raging, and they
hurried onward.

In Nismes they admired ‘ the magnificent adorn-

* ‘The dates hanging on all sides in dusters of an orange colour,
and the men swinging on bass ropes to gather them, formed a^ very
curious and agrefeable scene.’ (Swinburne’s Travels.)

* Roussillon was ever the first to suffer in the continual wars between
its two neighbours. ‘So both kings have granted the natives this
grace, that whosoever shall in such a year make the pilgrimage to
Montserrat or Compostella, and shall t^e a wife, shall be freed from
all the dangers and burdens of the war. If therefore there cometh
a cry of war, so are the most of them to be seen setting forth on these
pilgrimages, or being married, three hundred at a time. Others seek
refuge in flight ; but this is difficult, seeing that by their speech and
apparel they are easily recognised as gavackm^ dragged before the
judges and severely punished, often with the galleys.’ (Hubertus
Thomas.)

ITALY

103

ments ’ of the Roman remains ; and in Avignon — ^which
but a short half-century earlier had still been a mighty
tie sonnante of popes and cardinals — they briefly
record the sight of ‘ three fair things : a fair bridge, a
fair wall and a fair palace.’^ It was, however, the
defensive strength of Dauphine that struck them with
the greatest amazement. The interior of this moun-
tainous province could only be reached through two
narrow passes or gateways : ‘ and these doors \clamce']
are so strong, that were they assailed by all the kings
of Christendom together, they would suffer no peril,
for ever are they defended by a strong guard. Nor
did we ever anywhere see so many pieces of artillery,
for there must have been many hundreds there.’
Each King of France was bound to be nurtured in
Dauphin6, and should one succeed early to the throne,
his brother was at once sent thither ; ‘ and owing to
this ancient and invariable custom it happens,’ con-
cludes Schaschek surprisingly, ‘ that France can never
lack a king.’ ^

Through a smiling region of vines, flowers and fruit
trees, the party reached Piedmont, and so Magenta,
a district that belonged part to the Marquis of Mont-
ferrat and part to the Duke of Milan. And from this
little town Lev despatched a herald to the Lombard
capital to announce his coming.

Here therefore behold the wanderers in Italy — ‘ the
mother of starres, the parent of times, the mistres of
all the world ’ — in the thick and quick of that incom-
parable springing-time of art and intellect, that im-
mortal marriage of the ancient and the new, which

^ In Dominion in tixat stonding
ITie Pope hath a faire dwellyng :

A riole Palys, and well ydight,

Wit Towrez, and wyndowez, fiill of light,

A mery Contray, and a faire,

And also there is full good aire.

' (The ‘Musical Pilgrim.’)

* It was little more than ten years since Dauphin6 had been
definitely annexed to France by Charles VI L, an act that rendered
the dignity of the Dauphin purely titulary.

104 the bohemian ULYSSES

ushered in the Renaissance. Nor, although they but
traversed swiftly one upper corner of her spacious
territory, can they have failed even in this brief passage
to see enough of beauty to colour the visions— and the
grey Bohemian skies— of a lifetime. For Northern
Italy was no sluggard in the great uprising, and her
cities were among the first to reflect the dawn. Her
sculptors and her architects were already famous ; her
churches and palaces were radiant with the master-
pieces of Pisanello, of Squarcione, of Gentile Fabriano,
and of countless lesser men ; while Mantegna, Crivelli,
Gian Bellini and his brother, with all the enchanting
school of early Venice, were in the very bloom of their
pride and achievement. Milan, indeed, was to be a
flower of the full summer, and her moment was not
yet; for Lionardo was still a boy 'singing divinely to
the lute ’ in his father’s home of Vinci in the Val d’Amo,
and the dwellers in the great city of the plain were
concerned chiefly with the practical industries of
commerce and of war.

Yet the year of 1466 was no unimportant moment
in Milan’s violent and erratic career. The ‘good
Duke’ Francesco Sforza — ^perhaps the most typical
Italian of the fifteenth century — had died in this
very March, and his son, the dissolute Galeazzo
Maria, had already started on the precipitous course
that was to terminate so abruptly in the Church
of San Stefeno, just ten years after the Bohemian
visit.

The herald found the new Duke taking his ease
in ‘ a country-house ’ five miles from Milan. On
hearing, however, of the approach of the northern
noble, Galeazzo hurried to the city, and sent forth his
brother, Filippo Maria, with many distinguished gentle-
men to meet him. These escorted the travellers to a
splendid lodging ‘ named of The Fountain,’ where they
found luxuries at their desire, including the Duke’s
own cooks and caterers.

Here they stayed for a week in pomp and comfort.

THE DUKE OF MILAN 105

exchanging visits of state. Their first sight of Galeazzo
was in the main piazza, for on the third day, as they
were returning from the ‘ great and beautiful ’ but still
unfinished Cathedral, which lay opposite the ducal
Palace,^ they came suddenly upon him. He was
exceedingly amiable, although the conversation had
to be carried on through interpreters, and he even
offered to accompany Lev back to his lodgings. This
honour was, however, declined as excessive, and the
hospitable duty was performed by the ducal coun-
cillors. On the sixth day Galeazzo invited Rozmital
to his own magnificent abode : ‘ and when we were
come into the courtyard of the Palace, which was
marvellous elegant, the Duke with his mother and
brother came forth to meet us and there received my
lord himself and all his nobility most urbanely.’ Lev,
advancing between the Duke and the Duchess Bianca,
was then conducted to an inner chamber, where
speeches of a proper pompousness were exchanged,
and the usual presents offered and refused. When
the ceremony was over, the gratified guests re-
turned to their lodging under the escort of Filippo
Maria.

The Bohemians, in fact, seem to have found the
future t3n:ant much to their liking, Tetzel especially
being loud in his praise. ‘The Duke,’ he declares,
‘ is a beautiful straight, comely man, a fine “ Latinist,”
and holds a fine court, and loves the Germans, and
has a splendid Palace wherein he holds his court,
and over against this the most splendid church, all
transformed with marble imagery, and even wholly

* The old Corte Ducale or Corte d^Arengo. ‘ The court of the Lords
of Milan having fallen ill through want of food and being half-dead,
I restored it to health, without which restoration it would soon have
ended its days,’ wrote Filarete, who worked upon it under Francesco
Sforza. (Cf. Ady, Milan under the Sfcrza.) ^On our right hand was
the great and ancient palace of the Dukes of Milan, which was founded
by the Emperor Trajan. Opposite this was the cathedral, the chief
church of the city, so royal and magnificent in design and building
that after it has been completed with the towers, cupolas, images,
and last perfections, according to the plan, it will be one of the richest
apd most sumptuous of the world.’ (Calvete.)

io6 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

built therewith, so that the like, I think, exists not
in Christendom.’ His capital was throughout ‘a
marvellous splendid beautiful well-built city,’ with
many industries, many fine handicraftsmen and many
good armourers. As for the famous Sforza citadel,
begun by Francesco and now being completed by his
son, it was ‘the most all-splendidest Castle of all
earthly buildings ; ^ passing well watched and guarded,
since whosoever holds the Castle, can compel the
whole town.’ It was built, adds Schaschek, of squares
of fair white marble,® and the great hall measured
‘126 of my paces, and three-and-twenty feet.’ It
stood on the level; five bridges connected it with
the city ; nine walled and watered ditches sur-
rounded it. Between each moat was a great ram-
part, enclosing lengthy vaults, which ran all round
the building and contained a wealth of arms and
weapons.

A second visit of ceremony had to be paid to the
elderly Duchess — daughter of the great Visconti,
widow of the great Sforza and mother of the con-
temptible Galeazzo; for Bianca, though soon to be
forced into retirement by her son,® was still enjoying
a brief semblan,ce of participation in the government
of Milan. ‘The Duke’s mother,’ says Tetzel, ‘ruled
at this time over the whole country, and they say that
she is a wise woman.’ She was also ‘a big woman
old in years ’ ; but she had, needless to say, beyond
measure beautiful maids, and she bore herself graciously
towards the visitors.

' ‘ II pii superbo e forte castello nel mondo.’ (Corio.) ‘ In my
judgment, all the rest of Italy would not suffice to make the like in a
hundred years.’ (Beads.) ‘ The feirest without any comparison that
ever I saw, farre surpassing any one Citadell whatsoever in Europe,
as I have heard worthy travellers report.’ (Coryat.) It was not till
1468 that Gadeazzo took up his residence there and caused die halls to
be adorned in the wonderful manner that we know. The Bohemians,
therefore, did not see the building in its full glory.

’ Filarete was much abused by the Milanese for using marble
instead of Sarizzo or Lombard granite.

* She died two years later at Melegnano, it was said by poison.

THROUGH LOMBARDY

107

A fitting climax to the Bohemian sojourn in Milan
was a pilgrimage to the incomparable Church of San
Ambrogio, where the Bishop’s tomb, ‘ all curious with
gold and silver and set forth with precious stones,’
excited their profound interest. For this contained,
they were told, no less than three holy corpses. Two
knights who greatly reverenced the Saint had been
buried together during the lifetime of Ambrose. At
his death, so great was their longing for his company
that the tomb opened and the bodies moved asunder
to make comfortable room for him. And he was
accordingly laid therein.^ Here also was to be seen
the idol that had formerly been worshipped by the
heathen inhabitants of Milan.

HaAung paid his respects to the representatives of
Cosmo de’ Medici in ‘a fine house’ that may not
improbably have been the splendid palace newly built
by Michelozzo, Lev now set out for Venice, being
accompanied for a few miles by Filippo Maria, who in-
formed him, amongst other things, that Duke Galeazzo
received each day in tolls from the city of Milan alone
a thousand gold pieces. Rozmital was, moreover,
provided with safe-conducts both by Galeazzo and by
the Marquis William of Montferrat, the last of whom
likens him admiringly to Ulysses, the most prudent
and travelled of Greeks, who, traversing tempests and
the anguish of seas, had visited the cities of many and
known the manners of more. This, it may be, was
the source of that nickname of The Bohemian Ulysses
which afterwards clung to him.

Hurrying through Brescia — a city ‘ lovely and
ample,’ girdled with pleasant and frequent vines —
they chanced upon a scene fantastical and strange as
some old devout pageant of Japan or the farthest steep
of India. For as they went their eastward way they

* As they ‘lovyd togedere in ther lyfe, right so thei were not
departed in ther dethe/ concludes John of Hildesheim, when telling
the same story of the three Kings of Cologne. But this is an imusual
version of the legend of Ambrose and the twin saints Gervasius and
Protasius, whose lives were separated by three centuries . (Cf , Casola. )

io8 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

passed by ‘a certain hill,’ and upon this hill they
beheld with astonishment a multitude of people, thick
as autumnal leaves in the wind and dancing their
ringlets with as ceaseless a motion. When they asked
the cause of the so great hilarity and movement, .and
whether a wedding or the festival of a church was
being celebrated, the answer came that it was an
anniversary and expiation of sin.^ ‘For once on a
time, when the priests carried the Body of the Lord
through a great and crowded multitude of men, part,
which stood by the river’s shore, did reverently
prostrate themselves on their knees, but the remainder,
who were dancing on the mountain, did not so bend
down. Whence it is that all who are descended from
these men are forced, on this day in every year, to
assemble in their thousands upon the mountain.
And from the rising up of the sun even to the
setting thereof are they bound without inter-
mission to dance. And by that dancing they are
so wearied and weakened, that on the following
day it behoveth to carry them in waggons to their
homes.’

The Bohemians now entered Venetian territory and
passed the classic shores and fishy waters of Garda’;
and so they came to fair and famed Verona, and beheld
her deep streets and orchard walls, her balconies and
her blood-red doors. This strong city ‘ of that strongest

^ Probably a manifestation of the dancing-madness, though the date
does not coincide with the Feasts of St. Vitus or St. John the Baptist,
on which such annual expiatory outbreaks usually took place. Or
perhaps Schaschek was mistaken, and it was a festival of ‘ Tarantism,’
when any who had been bitten by the Tarantula (and many others)
assembled to dance out their frenzy to the music of the Tarantella.
This malady was common m Italy in the fifteenth century, but its crises
were also generally in the summer. (Cf. Meeker’s Die Tanzwuth^ tr.
Babington.)

* ‘ Within the lague [of Garda] is verie good fishe, as trowts, yeles,
pickerelles, tenches, and carpioni, which (as the inhabitants say) feede
upon the mines of gold and sylver that are in the lague- Onse this is
true, there are no excrements in the bellie of them, as in other fisshes ;
and this kind of fishe, they say, is found no where elles but onlie in
this lague.’* (Thomas Hoby.)

THE PALACE OF THEODORIC

109

of men, Theodoric,’ as Schaschek names it — ^for not to
him was it the immortal sepulchre of ‘ death-mark’d
love ' — was crowned by four castles, whereof two were
raised high on hills. One of these fortresses overhung
the swift-flowing jriver,^ and the little band contemplated
it with a reverent dismay. For it was the decay-
ing Palace of Theodoric, ‘once most elegant and
magnificent but now all desolate and collapsed.’ In
the daytime, the crumbling walls were still made
beautiful by the presence of women nobly bom who
dwelled thereamong. But when evening fell, they
were abandoned to the grim shadows of the past:
‘ by night they are disquieted by spectres, which come
together to disport themselves in the buildings.’ Nor,
indeed, can even the days of these noble ladies have
been festivals <?f unchequered mirth, for in the court-
yard of the Palace, a gibbet raised its horrid head,
and the travellers learned that upon this the natives
of Verona were allowed, as a special privilege, to
be hung, rather than upon the common and public
gallows. The Palace was fashioned of blocks of stone
so weighty and immense that their erection was at-
tributed by common report (‘and I cannot dissent
therefrom’) to the giant Theodoric himself and his
powerful knights. In a window overlooking the river
was to be seen the above measure high seat whereon
the hero and his men had been wont to sit, ‘and
whereby it might be judged of what a size his body
had been.’

The Bohemians also inspected the bath from out of
which, ‘springing suddenly to horse in pursuit of
certain wild beasts,’ Theodoric disappeared, to be
seen no more. Now, the common legend tells that
the King was decoyed by an ever-fugitive stag to the
very gates of helL But the travellers were informed

^ Theodoric had two palaces in Verona, one on the summit of the
‘ colle di S. Pietro/ and the other, where he himself dwelt, on the part
of the hill overlooking the river. This seems to be the one described
by the Bohemians.

110

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

by their landlord, a man of great age ‘who had it
from his parents,’ that the hero had been privily
slain by his enemies in the mountains, and his body
thrown into a near and very deep lake, wherein
-whatsoever fell, be it dog or Doge, sank instantly to
the bottom.^

From Padua, where they admired the great town-
hall, the multitudinous relics and the ‘flourishing
gymnasium for the study of various arts,’ a herald
was dispatched to Venice; and finally (in the month
of December) the little troop set forth. Having,
however, preferred to arrive quickly by the straightest
road, rather than to go round by Treviso, where an
escort from the Doge Cristoforo Moro awaited them,
they received at first but a chilly welcome. They
were forced to take refuge in a common lodging,
declares Tetzel, and dowered with no better offerings
than some sugar, ginger, wine and wax, — ^the cus-
tomary gifts of greeting to ambassadors. In fact,
the jocund Nuremberger is too much depressed to
record any details of this visit, and merely remarks
that being in want of money the Lord Lev applied
to the Signory for assistance, he— Tetzel — ^becom-
ing for the nonce interpreter; but that it was all in
vain.

Were this account a correct one, it would prove a
sad discrepancy between the words and deeds of the
lords of the Adriatic, for in their safe-conduct the
Venetians go out of their way to exalt the virtues of
hospitality, quoting Theophrastus in a pompous and
impressive manner. Schaschek, however, is less taci-
turn than his colleague and narrates the seeing of
many sights. Indeed, for him, as for later travellers,

‘ Cf. Beatis’s description of the wood named ‘ of treason,’ becavse
therein Ganelon had betrayed Charlemagne. ‘ If you pluck a branch
of this wood, whether great or ^mall, and plunge it m the river, it
gpes straight to the bottom : the which was proved by many of our
company. And that it may not be thought that this comes from the
nature of the water, all other wood that may^be plunged therein
remains floating.’

VENICE

III

the city seems to have worn an aspect singularly
‘ gay, flourishing and fresh, flowing with all kinds of
bravery and delight ’ ; while it appears from his diary
that the Bohemians were treated with the highest
honour. Each morning they were visited by the
chancellor and other dignitaries, and on the fourth
day they were escorted all over the Church of
St. Mark, which is enthusiastically described as
* builded throughout with the loveliest workmanship.’
They were even permitted to feast their eyes on the
famous Venetian treasury, that was kept under
jealous guard in a chapel of strong and solid
walls, and was of incalculable value and amount.^
Amongst other marvels were a unicorn’s horn of
an unthinkable size;* an offering dish, that had
belonged to St. Mark, made out of a balas ruby;*
and a turquoise so vast that when set on the head of
the Lord Lev he was covered as with a hat* Further-
more, twelve kingly crowns and breastplates, which
blazed with gold and jewels and were worn on
festival days by twelve senators’ wives who walked in
procession behind the priests and the holy elements.

‘ The said women wore long garments behind, but
in front, where the bosom protrudes, these were
cut away ; the which place was then covered by
these breastplates.’* But why wonder, concludes
Schaschek, at so precious and copious a treasury?
‘For this is the richest of all cities, with nine king-
doms subject to it and possessed of an uncountable
income.’

^ ‘ So much cryed up throughout the world, that it is com to be a
proverb when one would make a comparison of riches,’ says Howell :

‘ they say ther is enough to pay 6 Kings ransoms.* {Survay of VemceJ)

* See Illustrative Notes, 19,

* ‘ There is also a Garnett of a vast greatnes, formd into the shape
of a Kettle that will hold neer upon a gallon.* {Survay.) * Un seau k
puiser de Peau d*une seule pi^ce de grenat.* ( Voyages hist&riques,)

^ ‘ Un plat d*une seule turquoise.* ( V(^ages historiques^)

* ‘ Plena Lapidibus preciosis-* (Wey.) ‘ Chargez de perles et dia-
mants.* (Payen.) They were taken, says Howell, ‘at the sacking
erf Constantinople when the French and the Venetians divided the
spoyles.*

II2

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

These treasures, they were told, were fresh from an
alarming adventure. For not long before a man had,
with unparalleled audacity, knocked at the door of
the chamber wherein the serenissima Signoria was
at the very moment assembled. As excuse for a
rashness which should have cost him his life, hfe
displayed a ruby ring, one of the most precious
jewels of the entire collection. This, it appeared, had
been stolen, together with the rest of the treasure,^ by
a kinsman of the intruder, who for six-and-sixty weeks
had been laboriously drilling a hole through the wall
of the chapel and had at length succeeded in his
colossal task, only to meet with ruin at the hands of
the one man whom he sought to make his accomplice.
The precious objects were recovered by the Signory;
the denunciator was enriched for life ; and the culprit
was hanged with a golden chain on a gibbet erected in
the sea, which was still to be seen. It was recorded,
however, that the Doge of the day (the lamentable
Francesco Foscari) had himself strongly disapproved
of this sentence, holding, not without reason, that
it had been juster if the informer had been punished
and the thief, for his almost incredible cleverness,
rewarded.

Outside San Marco the Bohemians saw the ‘three
golden horses, taken from the heathen,’* and — front-
ing the Ducal abode — that goodly pair of stone
gallows whose sole purpose was to serve ‘as a
warning and reminder to the Doge.’ * They were

^ This ‘bold and cunning Candiot/ writes Howell, ‘embezeld
divers rich Jewells to the value of about 200,000 Crownes.'

® ‘Mis en sigpae de victoire pour ce que ung empereur sarrazin
avoit jurd qu’il feroit son estable de F^glise Sainct Marc.’ ( Voyage de
la Scdncte Cy td^

. ® ‘ Deux piliers de marbres pr^s Fung de Fautre . . . et quant le
cas advient qu’un due forfait, on met ung barreau de fer dor 6 d’or, en
fa9on de gibet, en pend on le due.’ {Ibid,) ‘A marvailous faire paire
of gallowes made of alabaster, the pillars being wrought with many
curious borders and workes, which serves for no other purpose but to
hang the duke. ... It is erected before the very gate of his Palace to
the end to put him in minde to be faithfull and true to his country, if
not, he seeth the place of punishment at hand.’ (Coryat.)

VENICE

113

then ushered into the Palace, where Cristoforo Moro
led Rozmital aside and talked with him in an inner
room.

Nor was this their only visit to the rose-coloured
dwelling of the Dukes of Venice, for two days later
they were invited to be present at the election of a
podesta or governor (prcefectus). Lev sat at the right
hand of the Doge, who was enthroned in a ‘ high and
lovely ’ seat. The councillors were arranged in rows
down the whole length of the great hall, ‘ at the sides
and in the middle, seated on lesser seats ’ ; and there
were two or three thousand people present. Before
the ‘tribunal’ of the Doge stood four yrooden
columns, whereon were placed a sort of drums, hollow
inside, and with holes in the top no bigger than a
hand might pass, which contained a diversity of
gilded, silvered and silken^ balls. Four-and-twenty
nobles, each holding a box in his hand, went about the
hall, distributing these ‘ berries or globules ’ to whom-
soever would. Then came another four-and-twenty
and did the like. And thereafter a third contingent of
nobles collected them all again. This process was
repeated many times, till finally they investigated and
discovered who, of all present, had received the
greatest number of golden balls, and this happy
person was at once elected, and dismissed to the
province that he was to govern. ‘ And in this
manner the Venetians elect their magistrates. Nor
can any one, even the Duke himself, through friend-
ship or kinship attain to be a magistrate, save by
lot alone.’*

When this ceremony was over, the travellers were
shown the two vast sea-storehouses of the Adriatic,
perhaps of all Venetian sights the most impressive.

^ ‘ Tenuissima tantum tela serica.’ Ray tells of ‘linen bsills, that
they may make no noise when they fall into the boxes.’ But Ais
account differs in many ways from later descriptions of these lotteries.

* ‘ By lott allso they . . . creat public ofiScers, so that this Republic
hath much of the modell of Platoes platform.’ (Howell.)

114 the bohemian ULYSSES

First came the arsenal, ‘the place where the ships
are fabricated, and where all their appurtenances,
ropes, sails ^ and the like, are fashioned. And never
does that work cease, for it is accomplished by con-
tinuous labour; and great is the multitude of artificers
and craftsmen.’ ■ Then followed the armoury, ‘ where
the machines and engines of war, powder, blades,
missiles and other furniture of battle are kept ; than
which things, in no place soever has it been per-
mitted to us to see the like in greater numbers
or more curiously and splendidly fashioned.’ Each
year many thousands of soldiers were collected and
maintained, that they might in time of need defend
the coast from those perilous Turks with whom the
Venetians waged so unceasing a war.

On the morrow Rozmital took formal leave of the
Doge, and also visited, in ‘a certain monastery,’ the
Papal legate. Of this interview no details are given,
though it was probably of considerable political
importance. In any case, so soon as it was over. Lev
turned to gayer matters, and rowed about the city in
his ‘gondelay’ (navicula)^ coming at last to land at
one of Venice’s greatest palaces, which reared its
comely height to the shining Venetian sky, a poet’s
dream of fantasy and splendour. For the building —
once the possession of the Dukes of Milan, but now

^ The ropes were made outside the arsenal, writes Casola, in a
covered place ‘ so long that I could hardly see from one end to the
other ’ ; and the sails ‘ in a large and spacious room where there are
many women who do nothing but make sails,’ Of the arsenal itself,
‘there seems,’ he exclaims, ‘to be all the iron that could be dug
out of all the mountains in the world.’ ‘ We were astonished,’
says Fabri, ‘at what we saw, and wondered how the water could
support such huge structures and such vast weights.’ As for ‘ the
house of the bakers, who bake biscuit for use at sea,’ they ‘ shuddered
at the great furnaces and the fires, and the labours of the workmen/
But the Bohemians saw the buildings before their third enlargement
in 1472,

* ‘A little gondelay, bedecked trim/ (The Faerie Queene,) ‘Every
marchaunt hathe a fayre lytle barge standynge at his stayers to rowe
thorow and aboute the citie/ (Boorde.) ‘ Et diet on qu’il y a plus de
batteaulx k Venise que de chevaulx ne muletz k Paris.’ ( Voyage de
l& Saincte Cyti.)

VENICE 115

belonging to a rich merchant ff om Alexandria ^ — was
adorned ‘with such elegance and beauty that never
was seen a lovelier edifice.’ Every doorway was
fashioned of white alabaster. In the chamber wherein
the merchant and his wife were wont to lie, the carpets
and coverlids were woven of silver ; the floor was laid
with pale alabaster, and the ceiling with silver and
gold. Within the bed were two pillows, adorned with
‘great unions or pearls,’ and a bolster embellished
with pearls and precious stones; and over the bed
was spread a canopy whose texture was worth 24,000
ducats. In another great chamber they found the most
prized — if prosaic — luxury of all : ‘ a chimney for heating
purposes.’® Its building had cost no less than 30,000
ducats. In the courtyard, too, was that miracle for
Venice : ‘ a well of sweet water, like those that we
have in our fountains; but instead of the sea-water
which is salt, this is sweet.’® When Lev asked in
amazement whether all this splendour must not have
cost at least 100,000 ducats, and thus infallibly have
exhausted the entire wealth of the merchant, he
was informed with derisive laughter that 300,000 gold
pieces had been the sum expended on the palace, and
that yet another 300,000 remained in his coffers.

Meanwhile, the owner of the palace, who, together
with his family, had graciously withdrawn to permit
an unfettered enjoyment of his treasures, returned.
He begged the visitors to remain a little longer, and
not ‘ to leave his house as fasting as though they had
been in a ruin.’ So they returned to the courtyard,
and were sumptuously entertained -with sweetmeats and
wine in vessels of gold and silver.’* The wife, who

^ Probably the palace that was confiscated and sold during the wars
which preceded the Peace of Lodi, 1454, and that was to be replaced by
the so-call^ Ca* del Duca, seen in its unfinished state by Pietro Casola.

^ See Illustrative Notes, 20, ® lUd,^ 21.

^ This ho^itality seems to have been contrary to Venetian practices.
‘Every man,® writes Casola, ‘departed fasting. . . . The Venetians
c^isider that the refreshment of the eyes is enough ; and I like the
i 4 eay because the refectioi^s offered at Milan on such occasions are a
great expense, ai^ those at Venice cost nothing.®

ii6 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

was a passing lovely lady, bore herself with the state
pf a princess, being never accompanied by fewer than
twelve footmaidens (pedissequas).

Before leaving Venice the Bohemians visited, as
became them, the famous Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, a
‘ house called of the Germans, where strange and
divers merchants were wont to congregate ’ but over
which the bright spirit of Giorgione had not yet
passed.^ And they wondered at the countless looms
for the weaving of far-sought cloths of gold and of
damask, and at the many merchants’ shops, ‘ wherein
inestimable riches were spread before us.’ *

Of the paintings — the nobler glories — of Venice, the
chroniclers make unhappily no mention. For they
pass the great wall-pictures of the Doge’s Palace (the
work at this time of Pisanello and Gentile Fabriano)
in Sik sorry a silence as, in Verona, the enchanting
frescoes of Sant’ Anastasia, and, in Padua, the famous
chapels of the Arena and the Eremitani. This is as
surprising as it is sad, since even in backward England
they had so carefully recorded ‘the many beautiful
efiSgies and images ’ which they had perceived upon
their way.

IX,

But the new year of 1467 was dawning, and with
it the grievous moment when Lev and his company
must turn their backs upon Venice and Italy
and their faces towards the vexed horizon of their
northern home. For — probably in response to the
cogent persuasions of Papal diplomacy — the journey

* It was the original Fondaco, destroyed by fire in 1508, and re-
placed by the building known to Giorgione and Titian.

* ‘Who could count the many shops so well furnished that they
almost seem warehouses, with so many cloths of every make — tapestry,
brocades, and hangings of every design, carpets of every sort, camlets
of every colour and texture, silks of every kind ; and so tnaoy ware-
houses full of spices, groceries, and drugs, and so much beautiful
white wax. These things stupefy the beholder, and cannot he fully
described to those who have not seen them.’ (Casola.)

FREDERICK III

ri7

to the Holy Sepulchre had been abandoned, and
Rozmital’s services to his native land were hence-
forward to be accomplished on^ Bohemia’s own
lamentable and blood-washed floor.

The travellers went by boat to Mestre and thence
on foot to Treviso, where they found their horses and
baggage and saw the four hundred flour-mills that
furnished Venice with bread. Traversing the Taglia-
mento, they entered Carinthia, and, passing by many
small high-walled cities and castles, arrived presently
in Gratz. Here the Emperor, attended by a host of
nobles, was for the moment dwelling, and the em-
bassy expected with confidence an Imperial welcome.
But these hopes were soon overthrown, for on this,
as on all occasions, Frederick III. justified his
title of ‘singular covetousness,’ bestowing upon the
Bohemian lord as scanty an honour as it were possible
to conceive. ‘ He was very gracious as to words,’
writer Tetzel, ‘but scurvily disposed as to deeds,’
and he sent them as greeting no more than one cask
of wine and one keg of Reinfall} He even declined to
allow them a sight of his treasures, with the exception
of one ancient garment, to wit ' a coat of red damask,
round which were winding borders a hand broad,
woven with pearls and precious stones, of which the
councillors of the Emperor say, that if he be ever in
need of money he may get for that coat more than
50,000 golden pieces, for there are said to be some
30,600 gems therein.’ * Is this really true ? ’ asked
Schaschek sceptically : ‘ the chamberlains assured us
so, but we did not believe him.’ In this parsimony
Frederick’s conduct was the more unworthy, that he
undoubtedly owed not only his life and throne, but
also the safety of his wife and son, to the timely energy
and faithfulness of George of Podebrad, who, but a few
years before, assisted by this very Lev of Rozmital,
had rescued the Imperial party from imminent peril at

^ A sweet wine from Rivoglio in Istria, very popular at this time.

tit THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

the hands'of the insurgents of Vienna. His behaviour,
however, seems to have been of a piece with his usual
habits, for his contemporaries almost unanimously
declare him to have been ‘ the most perfectly
niggardly ’ man that ever lived upon the earth.^ In
any case his sour reception sped the indignant guests,
and they stayed at the Imperial Court only long
enough to take part in a tournament, wherein Jan of
Zehrowitz and Tetzel, on battle-horses lent by Duke
Albrecht of Saxony, distinguished themselves mightily
s^ainst the two brothers Riemberger, famous fighters
of that day.

Embarking in boats on the River Mur, they made
their way to the Empress at Neustadt ; and since the
lovely and lively Eleonore, mother of the eight-year-
old Maximilian and sister of the King of Portugal,
proved far more * bland and humane ’ than her august
husband, here they remained for a week. Her welcome,
indeed, seems to have atoned for the inhospitality of
the, Emperor, for with her they drove in sledges,
before her they danced Portuguese dances, and t6 her
the^f displayed the foreign graces of the monkeys
and Moors which they had received as gifts from her
brother Alfonso. * And especially had she great joy
because my lord’s lute-player had learnt sundry Por-
tuguese dances in that land ; and these she would
have the King® learn both to play and to dance.’
They visited also the new Cistercian cloister, wherein
was already prepared the Emperor’s sepulchre, whose
lid alone was to cost i,ioo florins.® On the tower
of this church there hung a great bell of copper,
striped and banded with gold and boasting a curious

* ‘A Prince of an abject minde, enduring all things gather than he
would spend anything.' (Commynes.) Frederick, however, was by
this time again on bad teras with George of Podebrad.

* Presumably Maximilian, though he was not crowned king till
nearly twenty years later.

*r Frederick HI. was eventually buried in Vienna in a tomb which
the Venetian envoy, Carlo Contarini, describes as three cubits high
and all of alabaster, carved with most beautiful figures and animals ;
^ and they "say that it cost aoo,ooo florins, and verily t believe it.^

HOMEWARDS

1 19

history. A certain merchant had left in the charge
of a burgess of the town a mass of copper. He
stayed away, however, for so long a time that the
friend at last allowed his fellow-citizens to use
the metal for the casting of a new and long-desired
bell, on the understanding that, should the owner
return, the equivalent in money should instantly be
paid to him. But when the wanderer reappeared and
the offer was made, he pointed to the yellow stripes
that seemed to disfigure the bell, and told them scorn-
fully that to make good his loss would mean the
beggary of the city. For he had concealed all his
wealth in the copper and the stripes were of pure
gold. The burghers were sorely troubled and afraid,
but the magnanimous merchant consented to waive
his righteous claim, on condition that the bell should
thenceforward be rung free of charge for every bur3dng
that took place, whether of a rich man or of a poor.

Meanwhile the Empress, for all her affability, proved
no fountain of wealth to the distressed travellers, and
Lev was forced to pledge a valuable bracelet to a Jew
before he could continue his journey. This done, he
set out for Hungary, but, being refused a safe-conduct
by King Matthias Corvinus — ^no friend at this date of
George of Podebrad,^ whose crown indeed he coveted
— ^he relinquished this project, and went straight to
Bohemia. Even here there was danger to be feared
from the opposition of the Bohemian noble, Zdenko
of Sternberg, leader of the Papal party and so also an
enemy of the Utraquist King. But Rozmital found
plenty of adherents to defend and escort his little
company, the whole countryside having turned out to
greet them.

K'ing r Geoige and Queen Joanna had commanded
the homing wanderer to go straight to Prague ; and
there he was brilliantly welcomed by a procession
bearing the Holy Elements. ‘There were all the

^ Matthias Corvinus had married the daughter of George of Pode-
brad, but the little Queen had died after two years of marriage.

120

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

students, Rokycan^ and his priesthood, many lords
and nobles, and a hundred trumpeters ; many of the
common people also rode far out to meet him, and they
escorted my lord nobly.’ The Queen witnessed the
entry from a window, and then, accompanied by
the King, went out to embrace ‘ with great friendship ’
her much-loved brother. The notables and councillors
of the city, who seem to have been in some doubt as
to which side he would now adopt, presented him with
a butt of Malmsey and a cask of Reinfall, imploring
him ‘ not to be against the kingdom or against them.’
Rozmital was diplomatic : ‘ gave them" an honourable
answer, and was willing for the time being, as things
were, to remain quiet.’

At their leader’s request the faithful escort, and
especially the German contingent, were all honourably
rewarded, though not, as Tetzel rather grudgingly
observes, to the extent that people imagined. Lev, at
least, played his part with a proper bounty, for not
only did he give the excellent Ntiremberger two fine
horses, but ‘ he would not suffer us to depart, bidding
us accompany him home to Blatna, where we were
feasted for four weeks.’

‘And thus,’ concludes Tetzel, ‘came we back into
the land of Bohemia.’

Hie finis chartaeque viaeque. Here ends the
pilgrimage of Lev of Rozmital, for whom, despite his
name, this earth proved no valley of roses. He had
wandered ‘a deal of world,’ and served a long
apprenticehood to foreign passages. And now his
journeying days were done.

His later life, passed as it was in the tiltyard of
Bohemian politics, belongs to the annals of serious
history. It is enough here to say that he found the
unhappy kingdom in no calmer a mood than when
he had quitted it ; that through the excommunication

‘ Rokyzaaa, Archbishop of Prague, leader of the Utraquist party.

HOME

I2I

of his brother-in-law — which had been duly pronounced
— ^he lost the adherence of many friends, including
that of his valiant comrade Jan of Zehrowitz; and
that he filled with sobriety and honour the succes-
sive offices of ‘ Erbhofmeister,’ ‘ Landmarschall ’ and
‘ Statthalter ’ of Bohemia. He died in the year 1480
at Prague and is buried in its old cathedral. His
son, Zdenko Lev of Rozmital, attained to yet higher
distinction than himself. Indeed, during the reign
of Ludwig Ohne-Haut, who was to vanish so grimly
in the bogs of Mohacz, this later Telemachus reached
a height of almost absolute power. Not his, however,
the soft degrees of peace, nor the slow prudence to
make mild a rugged people. For his passion for
splendour, his unbridled ambition and his despotic
will earned him the jealousy and hatred of the most
of his compeers, and in the end robbed even his
children of their inheritance.

A MASTER OF WAR

INTRODUCTORY

The biographer of the knight Wilwolt of Schaumburg
has hidden himself behind the beloved figure of his
hero, andr were it not for the patient investigations
of Professor Ulmann, we should still be at a stand
in our efforts to discern him. But the learned historian,
in his interesting article on the unknown author of
the Stories and Deeds, discovers the personality of
one of the most remarkable memoir-writers of the
fifteenth century.

The chronicler, then, was himself a knight and
courtier of no paltry pedigree. Son oT Ludwig von
Eyb, famous councillor and annalist of the Elector
Albert Achilles, and nephew of Albrecht von Eyb,
distinguished translator of Plautus and writer of the
Spiegel der Sitten, he had also a blood-claim on the
heritage of letters. He was born in the latter half
of the fifteenth century, and passed his life in the
halls of the great: of the Margrave of Brandenburg,
of the Bishop of Eichstadt and of three Electors
Palatine of the Rhine.^ Nor is it improbable that

* The declining years of the younger Eyb were spent as Master
of the Household to the Palsgrave Frederick, afterwards the Elector
Frederick II., and it is pleasant to imagine that Hubertus Thomas,
who was later to chronicle the life of this prince (see tnjra, p. 241),
may have been led to do so by the example of the elder annalist.
Eyb certainly composed an illustrated Tournament-book during his
sojourn at Fredenck?s court, the preface of which was written in

A MASTER OF WAR

124

he wa.s personally present at much of the fighting in
the Netherlands and elsewhere, that he so graphically
describes in the biography of Schaumburg. To his
personal character a contemporary, Kilian Leib, gives
splendid testimony : ‘ in the opinion of reasonable
men, he was held for the most honourable and clean-
lived nobleman of his time.’ It is allowable, more-
over, to imagine that some of the virtues with which
he delights to adorn his friend were shared by himself.
They were to him, at least, the qualities of the ideal
hero, and he expresses the hope that his writings
may encourage their like in all his readers. Of these
qualities, valour, wisdom and kindness were the chief,
and they form no bad equipment for a soldier and
man of the world.

The Stories and Deeds of Wilwolt of Schaumburg
were written in the year 1507, and form the oldest
biography of a German nobleman and commander of
landsknechts at present kiiown. They precede by
several years the more famous memoirs of Berlichingen,
Sickingen and Frundsberg, and they are in no way
behind these either in interest or in truth. ‘ I am
inclined,’ writes Professor Ulmann, ‘to give them
the preference over most of the other memoirs which
have been written in the German tongue before and
during the Reformation.’ And he points out how,
in lively contrast to the greatly over-estimated auto-
biography of Gbtz, the Stories and Deeds lead their
hero continually through a world of important events,
whereby his truthfulness and accuracy may instantly
be gauged. Indeed, so far as the main outlines of
his narrative are concerned, there seems little doubt
that Wilwolt’s Boswell is a trustworthy guide; and
Certain details both of German customs and of
German diplomacy are accepted by historians on

1519; and this was but a couple of years before Hubertus took
semce under the Palsgrave. Yet the twb chroniclers jnay never
have actually met, since it was in 1521 that Schaumburg’s biographer
died.

INTRODUCTORY

125

his authority alone. Thus he forms the main
source from which Ulmann and Schultz draw the
material for their comments on the artillery and
tactics of late fifteenth-century warfare; and he has
been largely used as an expounder of the strange
code of laws that governed the famous tourney-
companies of the Four Lands. ‘ This true history,’
he names it himself, ‘which is not, for any sake of
rh3nne or fame, mingled with lies.’ And he is con-
soled for his shortcomings as a writer by the comfort-
able reflection that noble truths ‘demand not, to
be efficient, the artistry of a painted lie.’ If, there-
fore, his delineations of the well-beloved hero seem
at times to show a suspicious warmth of colouring,
this may be judged as but the natural exaggeration
of friendship and the romantic fashion of the day.

From the point of view of the modern and yet more
of the foreign reader, the style of the biography leaves,
in truth, much to be desired. For, besides being
written in the most uncompromising ‘ Middle High
Franconian ’ German, it surpasses even the diary of
Tetzel in the variegated fancy of its nomenclature, and
displays an embarrassing disregard for the ordinary
rules of punctuation. Glorying in his strength, the
annalist rejoices like a war-horse to stride from page
to page, with few stops save an occasional comma,
and no elucidations other than a handful of scanty
references to some shadowy hero of romance. Yet,
when he wills, Eyb can tell a story with the directness
and passion of an eye-witness. For he has that know-
ledge of things that comes only by experience, by
seeing and by doing. He can be simple, faithful and
brief. He can be vivid and he can be tender. At
times, even, with a few strokes of his brush, he can
produce a picture of brilliancy and charm. It is
impossible, for instance, to read without such a thrill
as Plutarch or Malory gives, his description of Wilwolt
at a tournament, ‘thrusting full well and knightly,
having on his head a lovely garland and his hair

126 A MASTER OF WAR

new-washed and adorned ’ ; going into battle with no
armour on him save a breastplate, dismounted from
his horse that he may the better encourage his men,

‘ stepping jo3ifully and with heart undaunted toward
his foes ’ ; breasting the walls of a beleaguered city
in his ‘ great feathered plume,' which draws not only
the eyes but the shots of the enemy. Nor is the
chronicler unsuccessful in portraying the less dis-
tinguished moments of Wilwolt’s career, as when he
falls ignominiously into the clutches of the wives of
Toi, or quits with more speed than grace the abode
of his 'lady and chief est friend.’ Indeed, the whole
episode of The Lady Rich in Virtue is a masterpiece.

Eyb has, moreover, a fine appreciation of the limits
of his art, and so seldom does he wander beyond
them that his work produces an unusual impression of
truth. At times he apologises for these limitations, as
when he regrets that ‘ to no writer of history is it
possible to tell the story of a fight orderly as it
happened, since many deeds occur all together at a
time, which can by the pen be brought forward only
in turn.’ He has pronounced literary tastes, and
is familiar with the poets of the Middle Ages, quoting
freely from such writers as Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Gottfried von Strasburg, and Thomasin von Zerklare,
and using at his ease the later hero-sagas, such as that
of the younger Titurel. Not unversed in the classics,
equally at home with the history of Rome and the
verse of Ovid, he seems even to have a certain
acquaintance with the modem literatures of Europe;
for he regrets the fact that the Germans were not
accustomed, like the Latin nations, to record their
deeds for the instruction of their sons.^

The question of the better education of the young
German nobility lay, by the way, very near to the

* ‘ They say,’ he adds, ‘ that the Germans sing their good deeds,
the French play them (and that is soon forgotten), but the Latins
write them, which remains in everlasting remembrance.’ Cf. the
lament, written many years later, of Sebastian Franck {supra, p, jov).

INTRODUCTORY 127

heart of Ludwig von Eyb. Anticipating Ulrich von
Hutten, he laments with vivid instances their neglect
of culture and of all the exercises of the intellect ; and
he deplores, even more sorrowfully, the undue eleva-
tion of ‘ common men ' that arose from this melancholy
indolence. For book-learning had not so far been the
preoccupation of the highly born in Germany. The
schools and universities were patronised only by those
for whom the career of the Church was ordained ; and
all who looked forward to a life of worldliness and
warfare were content with such education as could be
procured at the courts of princes and nobles more
powerful than themselves. 'For a long while now,’
writes the chronicler, with what is evidently a
personal touch of bitterness, ‘ the nobility have
despised all histories and have but little visited the
universities or practised the delicate arts, which yet
were not established for the commonalty ; and verily,
any who hath done so hath been mocked by the
young and by them of small understanding, and
termed a scribe.^ And hence, while the poor nobility
have fallen into forgetfulness of the virtues of their
pious and praiseworthy parents, the children of the
peasants set themselves to learn, attain to great
bishoprics and high posts under emperors, kings and
princes, and become mighty lords and rulers of the
lands and of the nobles; whereby, as the common
proverb saith, the stools have spning on to the
benches.’ Yet even so, he begins to perceive afar off
the first shinings of a new dawn. For already the
young nobles go more frequently to school, and take
more pleasure in the hearing of ‘well-ordered ora-
tions ’ ; and since there they practise not only school
arts but also the arms and weapons of knighthood,
they will soon know, how to take their places in the
world. So ‘ I verily believe,’ he concludes,. ‘ that the
ancient noble spirit will again arise in the young

' See Illustrative Notes, 22.

128 A MASTER OF WAR

hearts, and now henceforward rather be praised than
mocked or despised.’ Nor were his hopes unfounded.
For Maximilian had already appeared to prove that
chivalry need not be alien to culture or knighthood
the foe of knowledge; while the New Humanism of
Erasmus, of Johann Muller, of Reuchlin, was already—
even in the universities — pursuing its triumphant way.

Of the biographer’s practical knowledge of the
incidents and accidents of war there is proof in plenty.
‘ I have often myself been entrenched before citadels,’
he declares, and he sings his Iliad of battle and death
with the high enthusiasm and understanding of a
fighter. His point of view is wholly that of the soldier,
and he speaks with contempt of the ‘ many who sit at
home on couches and are not used to the taste of
powder, yet will hold forth upon the matter, telling
how the trenches were not well guarded and how the
folk were in danger from shot and other such things.’
He knows as well the obligations of the officers as
the duties of the men. ‘ It is a familiar proverb,’ he
interjects on one occasion, ‘ that one good commander
is better than two workmen. Moreover, it leads not
to a good ending, that a captain should take sword and
fight. He should rather take notice how goeth on
every side the battle, storming or business in hand;
where there is breakage, repair; order each dis-
position at the right moment; shout to his people
stoutly and manfully ; if he seeth failure or faltering,
instruct his men how they should guard themselves
and use their arms ; he shall also not fight himself,
save at need to protect his body.’ With regard to
the common soldiers he has no illusions, even in the
matter of courage. In battles, he tells us with perfect
frankness, only the front lines meet and fight, ‘ seeing
that in whatsoever army the front ranks are broken and
forced to give back, the hinder then commonly bethink
them of departing and go their ways.’ *

* ‘When several lines of pikes go down,’ writes Frundsberg, ‘the
persons who stand behind become somewhat timorous.’

INTRODUCTORY

129

Indeed, the most interesting part of Eyb's story lies
in the striking pictures which he gives of the habits
and customs of the landsknechts of Maximilian. With
dispassionate candour he relates their enormities, and,
though the perpetrators inspire him with no small
disgust, he is too much a man of his own time to
regard their actions as other than natural and needful.

‘ All who have had to do with the moving of armies,’
so runs one of his severest comments, ‘ know that
they are not to be victualled in sacks, and that the
soldiery, wheresoever it passeth, will help itself’;
and his sympathies are entirely reserved for the
enterprising heroes whose ill fortime it was to lead
and to feed these uneasy auxiliaries.

And, in truth, it is little wonder ; for to command a
regiment of foot-soldiers in that furious century was
an ungracious calling. The landsknechts were sons
of hunger and wrath, wielding weapons of primitive
simplicity; and they sought their sustenance where
they could, by the surest methods and the quickest
means. Flames and an eighteen-foot pike were cogent
persuaders, and, failing legitimate prey, served them
well even against their own officers. In fact, the
more humane the commander, the more wholly was
he at the mercy of his troops. Ruinous and ravenous,
they were the scourge ^ of every living and growing
thing upon which rested but for a moment the hideous
shadow of their passage. Devastation reigned around
them and desolation marked their trail.

Yet, from Eyb’s own showing, even the landsknechts
had their excuses. The fortress or town that had
refused to capitulate was the lawful prey of its
captors. Then even to the merciful were the gates of
mercy shut, and the flesh’d soldier ranged and raged
at will —

In liberty of bloody hand . . .

With conscience wide as hell.

^ ‘The Germaine troupes of Duke Albert which was called Dye
Groote Gaerde, that is to say, the Great Rodde, or the Great Whippe,
or the Great Scourge,’ (Grimeston.) See Illustrative Notes, 23.

A MASTER OF WAR

130

Thus, when his hero despoiled and destroyed the city
of Aerschot, the chronicler has no thought for any-
thing but congratulation ; while at Asch, though acts
of brutal atrocity were committed, he tells of them
with only a measured rebuke. The peasants had
fortified the church tower and defied the summons
to surrender, so the soldiers set fire to the refuge.
‘ And the tower above was all burning and blazing ;
and the folk fell out; and the men-at-arms held up
their pikes for them, and thus let them fall thereon,
catching at times five or six on the one spear.’ ^ And
although this was not merciful or Christian, observes
Eyb, it was not possible to keep the soldiers from such
things, ‘for they must perforce be allowed to work
their will.’ The landsknechts’ pay was also, to say
the least, precarious. Tardy in war, in peace it was
not. When fighting slackened, the unfortunate mer-
cenary was thrust out from his blossoming garden
of bloodshed into a barren wilderness of amity and
concord ; and had he not gathered his roses while he
might, his hap was indeed a sorry one. Moreover,
the booty that was constantly dazzling his eyes was
enough to shake the resolution of the most honest
Lazarus. In one single Flemish ‘ city of mightiness,’
a once pauper provost was found to have given 12,000
florins into the safe keeping of an abbot, and a mere
footman of Wilwolt’s company enriched himself in an
hour by 1,600 florins in solid cash. ‘ Played all away
the self-same day,’ adds Eyb contemptuously, ‘and
his own moneys therewith, that in the evening he had
not wherewithal to pay for a meal ; prayed one of his
comrades to lend him so much, who answered, were
he dying of hunger he would lend him never a penny ;
whereby may be seen what faith is in these foot-
fellows.’

Nor, even in piping times of war, was the lands-

^ The incident seems to rival in horrid skill even the lusty episode
of Ariosto’s Orlando ^ Furioso^ when the hero conquers a city single-
handed by spitting six. men on his lance.

INTRODUCTORY 131

knecht’s life an immitigate paradise of murder and
plunder, and the historian gives tragic glimpses of the
less roseate hours of his career. Horrible, especially,
were the sufferings of the wounded in an age of
ignorance and apathy, when the one sure surgeon
was Death and the one kind nurse oblivion. ‘From
this man they plucked an arrow, from that they dug
a ball,’ writes the chronicler with terse pathos of the
scene after a disaster : ‘ to some they gave the Holy
Sacrament, and to sundry they cried aloud that they
should hold God in their hearts ; and thus went the
souls out of many of them, for all were stricken and
it was a terrible lamentable business.’ The idea of
any ambulance had scarce dawned upon the world.
The doctors were a motley host of quacks, barbers,
cobblers, and ‘wise’ women, and the remedies such
comfortable things as earthworms and boiling oiU
As for the sanitary conditions that were considered
suitable and satisfactory, the descriptions of them
are enough to sicken the strongest stomach.® The
soldiers, however, were well inured to hardships,
and methods of mildness would probably have met
with the liveliest distrust. Even in moments of retri-
bution and disaster the unwounded went gaily with
their drums and pipes about the streets, ‘and were
right merry ; nor had any, who had not suffered, pity
for the others.’ *

And, when all is said, the landsknechts merely
pushed to itheir logical outcome the secret principles
of every ruler or politician in that century of self-
seeking. Ludwig von Eyb delights to compare his

^ See Illustrative Notes, 24.

* Cf. Hans Sachs’s vivid descriptions in the Landskmcht-Spiegel,

* Compare the letter written by the Comte de Chimay at the siege
of Neuss: ‘On the one hand is singing and music, on the other
wiping and pain. I hear on one side the cry : “ The king drinks I ”
with lively cheer; and on the other “Jesus I ” to admonish those who
are in the last pains of their passing. Into some rooms enter evil
wcMnen, and into others the Cross to lead lifeless bodies to the
grave. God alone, Who knoweth the cause of these diversities, can
estplain th^ things.' (Chastellain, t. 8.)

132 A MASTER OF WAR

hero with the knights of the Round Table : but it was
in no ‘ Arthurian ’ period, no age of chivalrous
romance or epic knighthood, that this hero lived.
Schaumburg’s world was a very different one from
that of Lancelot, and was neither, in the words of
Caussin, seated upon gillyflowers and roses, nor
shining with the mere storms of spring. Born at the
terrible moment of the fall of Constantinople, the best
years of his life traversed those decades of the dying
fifteenth century that sunder so trenchantly the Middle
Ages and the Modern Age. And these decades were
not poetical. As they were essentially periods of
change and reform, so they were essentially periods
of violence and ruthless egotism : the new order
fighting against the old, and the old order divided
against itself. Neither balance of power nor the divine
right of kings had yet been invented, and supremacy
was the sole aim of every state, of every class and of
every individual. A rood of land felt itself a kingdom
in the making, the smallest principality was to itself
an empire soon to be ; and there was never a m.an so
mean but he could strive like his betters to be ‘ master
and lord of the game of the world.’ ‘ It is manifest,’
wrote Commynes, ‘ that neither naturall reason, neither
knowledge, neither feare of God, neither love towards
our neighbor, is sufficient to keepe us from using
violence against others, from withholding other men’s
goods, nor from ravishing by all meanes possible that
which appartaineth to others.’ If some semblance of
equilibrium were maintained, it was but an equilibrium
of conflict, of ‘ wars and divisions,’ of the incessant
and impartial buffeting of each evil government by
the rest. ‘ En tous dtats y a bien k faire h vivre en ce
monde.’

Again, a sovereign was still only accidentally master
of his people, and a royal or imperial decree was still,
save in questions of war, an undue usurpation of
authority. If some sudden edict chanced to be dis-
pleasing to the subjects who should have obeyed it,

INTRODUCTORY 133

the old feudal spirit of independence and rivalry sprang
instantly into fresh life. Indeed, at the very moment
that this spirit was nominally yielding to the pressure
of modern weapons and modern statecraft, it was, in
reality, suffering a second incarnation in the brilliant
and obstinate energies of waking towns and a waking
people. At such a time the dominant figures are
bound to be ambitious, remorseless, treacherous and
careless of brutality. Of Europe’s rulers only the
strongest could survive, or those who could command
in the place of strength the yet more valuable
aiixiliaries of cunning and fraud. So Europe was in
the grip of men such as Charles the Bold and Matthias
Corvinus, Louis XI. and Alexander VI., Caesar Borgia,
Ferdinand of Aragon, and Henry VII. ‘ Ces diables
de rois,’ said Panurge of the Roi Anarche, ‘ne
s^avent ny ne valent rien, sinon a faire des maulx es
pauvres subjectz, et k troubler tout le monde par
guerre pour leur inique et detestable plaisir.’ And
the Europe of Schaumburg was alive with ‘King
Anarchs.’ The age had cast itself loose from the
ordinary moorings of national and international
morality.

Even this ruthless century has, however, its more
lovely side, and (to leave untouched the splendours of
the Renaissance) the period was not one of small
renowns or meagre accomplishments. Chivalry,
though drawing to her doom, was making a last brave
struggle for existence. The age of Du Guesclin might
be over, but the age of Bayard was at its full. And, if
the tiltyards of Europe had declined into mere peep-
shows for the gay extravagances of pomp and apparel,
the battlefields were still, in the phrase of BrantOme,
embossed with the flower of her nobility and knight-
hood.

A MASTER OF WAR

^ Maisters of warre and Ornaments of peace : speedy goers and strong abiders,
triumphers both in camp and courts/ — SiR Philip Sidney.

Seldom has a youth embarked on life’s shifting sea
with a finer setting or more splendid circumstance
than did Wilwolt of Schaumburg. The courts of
emperors and princes were his home from earliest
childhood, and it was in the service of the most re-
nowned commanders of Europe that he achieved that
knightly fame which won him the offices of his dis-
tinguished chronicler.

Nor were these achievements unworthy of their
surroundings, for the young knight’s career unrolls
before us with amazing vigour. His exploits are as
various as they are vivid, and to read his Stones and
Deeds is to move in a gallery of coloured and furious
battle-pieces, or the fantastical pageantries of primitive
art. Never was an enterprise too exalted for him and
never an effort too mean. In the field he was always
to the front, the eager leader of the forlornest hopes ;
in the lists he was the brilliant champion of a brilliant
company ; while ‘ behind certain windows ’ — and these
not a few — he was regarded as the unparalleled
phoenix of his sex.^ ‘ I have read,’ declares his

‘ The veiy ‘ Primerose of Nobilitie,’ as Ascham would say.

*34

p- 1341

THE COURT OF THE EMPIRE 135

admiring annalist, ‘ through many books of chivalry,
histories and chronicles, but can write on my truth
that in them all I have found no knight who has
achieved so many fights, or with so few folk defeated
so much folk. I find also none who has suffered so
many jeopardies and adventures ; and I verily believe,
did King Arthur yet live, he would not have denied
this knight, as a worthy Round-Tabler [Tq^runc/er], the
room and rights of the Table.’

Sprung of an ‘old long well-distinguished noble
race and name,’ and being even in his childhood
apt to chivalry, Wilwolt of Schaumburg was sent
at an early age to the Imperial Court, where he was
industriously educated in all manly arts,^ mingling
so freely with princes and pages, that ‘none rightly
knew the distinctions between them.’ His immediate
patron was Count Rudolf of Sulz, Councillor of the
Empire, and when, with increasing stature, the boy
was permitted to set his steps on the crowded high-
ways of Europe, this ‘ wise and excellent nobleman ’
was his instructor and his guide.

The most notable of their joint adventures was in
the year of our Lord 1468, when the Emperor Fred-
erick III. — ^the sorry Arthur of Eufop«’s strange Round
Table — set forth for Rome and Venice with a retinue
of fourteen princes, a great and noble knighthood,
and 700 horse all clad and caparisoned in black.
The two were here in direct attendance upon their
Imperial master, so the boy appears in no mean
manner: lodging in costly palaces, hung with splen-
did tissues and cloths of gold ; sailing in great
barges and stately galleys, ‘marvellously adorned
with golden hangings and embroideries ’ ; listening to
innumerable speeches of welcome, with ‘the lovely,
delicate and elegant words such as they use in those
countries ’ ; slaking his thirst at the goodly tables that

* The best account of a boj^s life at the Court of Frederick III. is
in Weisskunig, where Marimilian describes his own education at tins
very moment

A MASTER OF WAR

136

were spread about the streets of the cities,^ having on
them ' the costliest meats and liquors, with all that the
heart or hand of man could desire, for all men whether
on horseback or afoot to partake of.’

Nor was Wilwolt without his allotted part in the
more solemn ceremonies that lent dignity to the
undignified Emperor’s sojourn in the mother-city of
Christendom. On Christmas Day he was present at
the Holy Christ-Mass in ‘sand Fetters Mttnster,’ when
Frederick, wearing a dalmatic and a costly hat, given
to him by the Pope and said to be worth about 8,000
ducats, celebrated the Feast in the ancient Imperial
manner ® by chanting the gospel and brandishing the
sword of the Church. ‘ And when the Emperor was
about to sing, then did one of the highest servants take
the hat from oflf his head, and give him into his hands
his naked sword, the which was commonly borne
before him. And this did the Emperor hold right
earnestly aloft. And during the singing of the Holy
Evangel he did shake the said sword right mightily.’

Moreover, when a hot argument arose between the
cardinals and the Imperial councillors as to the
proper elevation of the Emperor’s chair, it was to
Wilwolt that fell the high and happy lot of raising
his sovereign a handsbreadth nearer to the Papal
Insolence. The seat that had been prepared for the
august visitor was a little lower than the Pope’s seat,
but not low enough to please the cardinals, who
murmured angrily : ‘ whereby might be marked the
exceeding presumption of these priests.’ On the
other hand, the Imperial authorities declared that
the seat was too low. So the golden tablets were
brought, and the Pope stood still with the Mass while

^ At Ferrara the Imperial retinue consumed at these street tables
so much butter, malvoi&ie and iribzani [‘ trebbiano : a kinde of
excellent wine.’ Florio.] ' che fu un stupore.’ {Diatio Ferrarese^

^ Thus in 1 41 5 the Emperor Sigismund ‘ read at the holy Christ Mass
the evangelium ‘‘ exiit edictum a cesare Augusto,” and had a naked
sword in his hand, showing that he wotdd fight for the gospel of Christ
and defend it with his sword as the gu^ydian of holy Christen4o?:^»^
(Ma^debursrer Chronik.)

AN IMPERIAL JOURNEY 137

they were read aloud. And when it was found that
they permitted Imperial Majesty to be a little raised,
Schaumburg, as page, was called to bring the bricks.^

Again, Wilwolt participated as a not unimportant
actor in the great ceremony of the Tiber Bridge.
Indeed, to a boy with a soldier’s soul, this was doubt-
less the crowning moment of the expedition. Papal
Holiness and Imperial Majesty went forth together
on horseback under ‘ a lovely golden affair made into
a canopy.’ Before them went twelve white ambling
nags, richly adorned and bearing each a silver coffin
filled with relics. In front of the Pope was a cardinal
carrying a priceless golden cross, and in front of the
Emperor the Hereditary Marshal of the historic house
of Pappenheim bearing the same naked sword that
had shaken so mightily at the reading of the Scriptures.
When they arrived at the bridge, the Emperor
summoned round him all his princes and nobility, and
in the sanctifying presence of Paul II. dubbed many of
them knights. And among those who received ‘ this
most rarest knighthood ’ was the fortunate Schaum-
burg,^ who-, being the son of an Imperial Councillor,
was thwacked ‘ upon a sack with oats.’ Well might
' the chiefest cannons, quartans, and great pieces ’ ® of
Sant’ Angelo go off with a lively noise.

But, as a scene of pageantry, it was Venice that left
the most vivid impression on the mind of the young
traveller. For here Wilwolt and his masters were
received with unprecedented magnificence, and made
an entry ‘ so glorious and solemn, that so rare a thing

* See Illustrative Notes, 25.

* It was a fashion of this century to knight even quite small boys.
Eustache Deschamps regrets it :

Et encore plus me confont,

Ce que Chevaliers se font,

Plusieurs trop petitement,

Que X ou que VII ans n'ont,

Lai de Vatllance,

® ‘ Haubtpiiclisen, cartanen und ander grosse geschiitz.^ Cartaiun
(Kajtaunen : quaxtana) : pieces of ordnance shooting a stone weighings
a <|U2uter of a hundredweig^ht^ (Cf Sc|iiiltz.)

138 A MASTER OF WAR

has never been achieved even in this illustrious city.’ ^
They were met on the sea-shore by six of the
‘ mightiest gentlemen ’ of the republic, who had brought
with them a great galley-foist slung with cloth of gold
for the conveyance of the Emperor, two barges for his
nobility and retinue, and one hundred other boats for
sheer honour and glory ; while, when still a mile from
the shining palaces, they were greeted by the famous
Bucentaur—' a delicate galley, far more beautiful and
noble than the first ship ’ ® — bearing the Doge himself
and the whole of the Venetian nobility. The green
waters of the Adriatic were brilliant with the
welcoming citizens, with gay and tapestried pinnaces,*
with damsels ‘ more beautifully dressed than seems
possible, with maskeries that danced ’ and with
‘fountains that flowed,’ with castles that combated
together in the most lifelike manner, and — finally and
most notably — ^with a remarkable galley ‘whereon
stood a cuirassier \kurisei^ of a solemn and valiant
figure and terrible in his countenance, who bore in his
hand a naked sword, all furnished forth for adventure.’ ^
When the Emperor drew near to the town walls, the
Venetian warships, brave and bannered, discharged
their great pieces : ‘ and the stones strake above
measure long streaks in the sea, the which lasted even
till the stones lost their strength and fell to the
bottom, right merry and adventurous to behold.’

^ Cf. P. Ghinzoni, Federigo II L a Venezia in Archivio Veneto^ t. 37.

* ‘A worke so exceeding glorious that I never heard or read of
the like in any place of the world, these onely excepted, viz. that of
Cleopatra, which she so exceeding sumptuously adorned with cables
of silke and other passing beautifuil ornaments ; and those that the
Emperour Caligula built with timber of Cedar and poupes and sternes
of ivory. And lastly that most incomparable and peerelesse ship of
our Gracious Prince called the PHnce Royall which was launched at
Wollige about Michaelmas last, which indeed doth by many degrees
surpasse this Bucentoro of Venice, and any ship else (I believe) in
Christendom.' (Coryat.)

® ‘ Palischermo : a kind of small ship, Pinnace, Galley or Barge as
Sea-men triumph in.' (Florio.),

^ The Milanese agent Confaloniere describes this figure in his
letter to Cicco Simonetta as ‘un cavalo grandissimo con iiflperatore
suso armato al \an{\ iga,' ( Arch, Ven, 37.)

AN IMPERIAL JOURNEY 139

And this spirit of triumphant mirth and hospitality
seems to have lasted throughout the visit. Churches
and cloisters, arsenals, palaces, the treasury — all were
shown off to them. One day they were entertained
with a banquet in the great hall of the Doge’s Palace,

‘ five hundred sumptuous ladies ’ being present. And
on another they assisted at the 'admirable festivals’
of a bull-hunt and a decapitation of pigs. To be short,
they were made free of the unparalleled glories of
Venice, and one only detail marred the harmonious
splendour of the occasion.

It must be confessed, indeed, that this was a detail
of some importance, for it consisted of no less a person
than the Emperor himself. Frederick III. was seldom
an imposing figurehead,^ but on this visit he showed
to even less advantage than usual, and his uncouth
antics disgusted a people accustomed to the pomp
and dignity of the Italian courts. On the very first
day of his sojourn, though the Signory sent cere-
monious messengers to inform Imperial Majesty that
it was coming in state to call upon him, he declined to
await its arrival, and went out with the most meagre
attendance. On the other hand, at a wedding in the
Casa Vendramini, he stayed for two long hours ‘ very
domestically,’ making his people dance with the
ladies, and himself kissing the bride and ' such others
as seemed to him best,’ He had also a passion for
the Venetian shops, which suited ill alike with his high
estate and his niggardly nature. He wandered about
all day long, looking inquisitively at the jewels and other
merchandise and asking their prices; but he bought
nothing. And there is even a mysterious story of a
pearl necklace being rescued by the agonised merchant
from under the Imperial feet, and costing its owner an
ignominious dismissal from the presence-chamber.®

^ The Ferrarese chroniclers, with brief impertinence, describe him
as ‘ German, old, with few teeth in his mouth/ {Diaria Ferrarese,)

* He collected precious stones, says Griinbeck^ not for their beauty,
but to awafee envy in other kings.

140 A- MASTER OF WAR

Still more ingloriously, he would snatch at handfuls
of sweetmeats, and not only devour them himself
‘ publicly and familiarly,’ but cause his retinue to do
the like; and even after a banquet, though feasted with
prodigality, he would seize as many figs as he could
hold in his hands, and go about the piazza eating them
and giving them to his people.^ Whether this was
done to acquire the reputation of benevolence or
merely from his ‘natura hornda e in tuto aliena,’ I
cannot say, concludes his chief critic.® But the fact
remained that his retinue treated him ‘without any
reverence soever,’ and that he was incessantly
shouldered and pushed about by the multitude that
accompanied him.

LucMly, perhaps, for the shaping of Wilwolt’s
character at an impressionable moment of his life,
he had better fortune in the hero of his next great
adventure. For over his horizon there now rose that
surprising comet, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, whose
ambitions and audacities were the constant preoccu-
pation of Europe, and beside whose splendour Imperial
and Italian pomps alike rew pale.

The famous ‘ Duke of the Occident ’ was already,
indeed, past the zenith of his strange meteoric career.
Five years had passed since Louis XI. had been his
prisoner at Peronne : since Dinant and Liege had been
‘ cleaned ’ from off the face of the earth ; and since
Margaret of England, in a ‘ little gown of- silver ’ and
a fair white garland of roses, had given him her hand.
It was the moment when, as Commynes pungently
tells, his successes had made him ‘woonderful loftie
and high-minded,’ and when, wearied of stale and un-

^ * It was his habit, so often as he felt the longing to eat, no matter
the time or the place, and even if driving in a carriage, to devour
sweet peais, peaches or apricots.’ He had a special love for grapes,

‘ which he seemed not to suck dry, but wholly to eat up.’ (Grunbeck.)
He died of a melon.

® These adverse details are all from the reports of the Milanese
agents, who had special reasons for hostility, owing to the fact that
Frederick had just declined to grant the investiture of the Imperial
hef of Milan to Q^leazzo Marja Sforzq,.

THE SPLENDOUR OF BURGUNDY 141

profitable warfare with France, he was beginning ‘ to
finde great sweetnes in those Dutch enterprises ’ that
finally allured him to his doom. And already the
clouds of his stormy setting were gathered together.

None the less, to the honest Germans of our
chronicle, the ‘ high, mighty, and powerful ’ Duke of
Burgundy still shone forth as a portent of inimitable
splendour. ‘ Never has any man beheld the like,’
writes the annalist; and again (and repeatedly), ‘Surely
such costliness has never before been witnessed in
any corner of the world.’

The scene of the meeting between the great Charles
and the small Wilwolt was laid in that old solemn
city of Treves, amidst whose walls so much of history
has been unrolled ; and the occasion was the famous
interview (September 1473) when, hot with hope of
a new and powerful dominion of the entire Rhine,
to be sealed by the marriage of his daughter to
Maximilian and consummated by his eventual suc-
cession to the Empire, the Duke held out greedy
hands of friendship to the alarmed and suspicious
Frederick.

Duke Charles arrived in the town on September 30,
and forth to meet him rode Imperial Majesty with
all that was noblest and most chivalrous in Germany.
The descriptions of the Emperor’s trappings would
seem brilliant enough to satisfy the hungriest historian.
Purple and gold was his vesture, and his son Maxi-
milian was brave in a damask of green ; while as to
the innumerable retinue that followed in his wake,

* they would not greatly err who said, “ Peregrina
luxurio patriam gloriam commutasse Germanos.”’^
Yet, in the unanimous opinion of the many chroniclers
of the occasion, Frederick showed but meanly in
comparison with the startling pageantry of Charles.
For the Burgundian, who desired above all things to
impress the world with his fitness for sovereignty,
had excelled even his wonted magnificence. Seated on
* De Cmgressa Friderici III, in Freher, Germ, Her. Script. iL

142 A MASTER OF WAR

a horse ‘all clouded with gold,’ he advanced at the
head of the knights of the Golden Fleece. Over his
cuirass was a blazoned coat worth 100,000 florins,
‘ whereon naught could be seen save the all-splendidest
and costliest precious stones and marvellous great and
lovely pearls ’ ; and on his left side hung a baldrick a
dwarfs hand broad of the like stones and pearls, the
whole being set so cunningly that it matched the
colourings of the Burgundian liveries. His attendants
also were accoutred in the most sumptuous fashion ;
‘ one and all well horsed and housed, dressed and
adorned to the uttermost’

The greeting was as cerempnious as it was magnifi-
cent, the two sovereigns vieing with one another in
lengthy courtesies and condescensions. When these
were accomplished, the procession advanced with
redoubled glory upon its homeward way. As it was
nearing the city, however, there suddenly descended
upon It ‘an above measure great downpouring rain.’
And here appears at once a striking contrast between
the splendid extravagances of the Duke and the
economy of the later Charles, his great Imperial
descendant. For Charles of Burgundy was as prodigal
as Charles of Hapsburg was prudent. When, some
three-quarters of a century later, the Emperor was
kept waiting before the gate of Naumburg in a shower
of rain, he sent into the town for an old felt hat and
cloak, meanwhile turning his new mantle, and pro-
tecting his black velvet cap under his arm. ‘Poor
manl’ comments Sastrow satirically, ‘he who had
tons of gold to spend would rather expose his bare
head to the wet than allow his cloak to be spoiled by
the rain.’ But Charles the Bold was of a less careful,
if also less calculating, temperament So, although the
Emperor Frederick and his train of princes now
instantly shielded their gorgeous apparel with service-
able cloaks, yet ‘ Duke Charles for very pride would
put on naught wherewith to cover his jewels and
adornmefits, nor permit his retinue to do the like, nor

THE SPLENDOUR OF BURGUNDY 143

to take any other care soever ; but they remained in
the tempest thus arrayed.’

The Duke was lodged in the Monastery of St.
Maximin that lay by the town, and here after a few
days he gave a great banquet to the Emperor, which
Wilwolt was privileged to attend. Once more the
ingenuous Germans were ‘ amazed with a great
wonder ’ ; for Charles had caused all his apartments
to be hanged with the finest tapestries of Flanders,
with cloths of silver, of damask, and even of pure
gold, *^the value whereof none may reckon.’^ The
very passages and stairs were curtained and carpeted —
a luxury beyond dreams — ^with good soft Flemish
stuffs ; while to honour this earthly potentate even the
sanctuary of the cloister was freshly decked and diapered
with ‘costly holinesses impossible to believe.’ The
Burgundians themselves were blazing with incredible
splendour, clad in golden raiment and the thickest
and finest velvets, and surrounded by the inestimable
treasures of the ducal plate coffers. And so over-
whelming was the ‘delicacy, nobility and singular
pomp’ of the service, that the chronicler declares
himself wholly unable to describe it : ‘ but I verily
believe,’ he concludes, ‘ that the like has never
been seen, heard or known in the land.’® As to
Wilwolt, he was so overcome by the gorgeous sight
that he begged instantly to be admitted to the Ducal
household,® and at the conclusion of the banquet,
aided by an Imperial request, he was enrolled among
Charles’s cuirassiers.

Here, then, is the budding hero helping to the best
of his small powers to swell the fiery tail of this his
bright particular star ; certain in his young and con-
fident heart that so he would quickly soar to the
summit of his knightly ambition. But there was a

^ Spderische Chronik.

* ‘ One might have thought it the court of Alexander or Ahasuerus/
says Meyer.

i * Eyb g^ves a long list of the offices and emoluments of Charles’s
household.

A MASTER OF WAR

144

flaw in his reckoning. The comet was already on the
downward track.

For, despite all the splendour and the shouting, ^ the
Duke of Burgundy’s dreams were no nearer realisa-
tion. He had come to Treves with the fixed intention
of being crowned King by the Emperor whom he
hoped to succeed, if not to supplant ; but the matter
grew no riper than at the beginning. Week after
week dragged to its barren close. Audiences and
orations were daily events, and Frederick and Charles
alike sprinkled the air with ‘beautiful words.’ But
nothing further occurred. On one occasion the Duke
in impatient wrath dismissed his baggage and caused
the trumpets to sound his departure. His men were
accoutred and on their horses, when the Em|)eror
came running and opened the negotiations anew.

At length, however, in the minds of at least one of
the negotiators, the matter was settled. Charles was
to give his daughter to the Archduke Maximilian, and
was himself to be crowned as King of the new King-
dom of Burgundy. The great moment seemed at
hand. The diadem and the sceptre were fashioned,
the throne was erected, and the cathedral new fur-
bished and furnished for his anointing. Yet it was
again but an imperial mirage. Though the rumour of
his kingship as an accomplished fact had gone forth
to the startled courts of Europe, though the Swiss
Confederacy was hurriedly preparing for war and the
Venetian Republic as hastily making overtures for the
maintenance of peace, yet on the appointed day no
ceremony was to take place.

For as a fact there was no one forthcoming to per-

^ ‘ There were daily spectacles and games of horses, contests and
courses of spears, sham fights and combats, opulence and the glitter-
ing show of high estate. The emperor excelled in number and
nobility of illustrious men, but the duke was more prodigal in the
pomp and splendour of things. Indeed, I heard one who affirmed
that there was rivalry between them, and that, forgetful of their
stations, the greater man envied the lesser, and the lesser despised
the greater.' (De Congressa Friderici III.)

A CHANGE OF LEADERS 145

form the ceremony, or to throw open for Charles the
'proud majestical high’ doors of regal sovereignty. The
Lord of the Earth had departed in the night, ‘ shipping
hastily’ away from the scene of his prospective dis-
comfiture. ‘Imperial Majesty,’ says Eyb somewhat
baldly, 'conceived a great annoyance, sat upon a ship
and sailed down the Moselle to Coblenz, and albeit the
Duke hastened after him and would have brought him
back, his Majesty was so inflamed with anger that he
departed and nothing came of the kingly crowning.’
It had been the turn of Charles to come running, and
he had run in vain. So he spent his coronation day
in solitary wrath, clenching his fists (declare the
chroniclers of Strasburg), gnashing his teeth and dis-
severing the furniture. Nor was this strange evasion
ever fully explained, save perhaps by the Emperor’s
abject fear of his opponent and by his habitual vacilla-
tions and vagaries.^

Meanwhile, for good or ill, Wilwolt of Schaumburg
had cast the die in favour of the Burgundian. His life
in the Imperial Court was at an end, and with it passed
the careless and comfortable days of his boyhood.

The dislodging from his See of the Archbishop
Elector of Cologne (that genial Rupert of the Palatin-
ate who, twelve years earlier, had delighted in the
Bohemian dances of Rozmital’s little company) supplied
Charles of Burgundy with an excellent pretext for
intervention in Imperial affairs. So Wilwolt’s next
appearance is before the battered walls of Neuss,
assisting his new master to conduct the famous siege
in the teeth of the Emperor and the whole fighting

^ Some historians attribute it to Frederick’s inability or dislike to
pay the debts incurred at Treves. He was, wrote a French envoy, a
man ‘ endormi, iiche, pesant, morne, avancieux, chiche, craintif, qui
sc laisse plumer la barbe k chacim sans revanger, variable, hypocrite,
dissimulant, et k qui tout mauvais adjectif appartient/

146 A MASTER OF WAR

power of Germany. This was the first practical in-
troduction of the future captain to the arts and
ingenuities of war ; and though his own part in the
matter was small, many of his later successes may be
traced to the example which was here provided for
him by his ‘ winged and agile ’ commander.^

It was at Neuss, for instance, that Wilwolt learned
the very various usefulness of wine-barrels. When
the army had been cheered and invigorated by their
consoling contents, the great casks were welded by
Duke Charles into two bridges so solid that over them
chariots, knights and horses could pass with ease;
while, when filled with earth and piled on high,
they made fine ramparts for the protection of the
intrepid ladies who toiled unremittingly at their
perilous tasks.

For at Neuss, also, Wilwolt was taught the equally
multifarious utility of the cloud of females which then
invariably followed the armies of Europe. Not only
did they nurse their owners in sickness and comfort
them in health,* but when need arose they went bravely
into danger. When Duke Charles suddenly deter-
mined to divert the waters of the Erft into the Rhine
by sinking large ships weighted with stones, earth and
sand across the smaller river, it was these women, to
the number of four thousand, that he employed. ‘ And
the said women were given a pennon by the Duke,
whereon was painted a woman, and whensoever they
went to or from work, then went this little flag before
them, even with drums and pipes.' ®

It was at Neuss, again, that Wilwolt discovered how
even a mighty river like the Rhine could be locked

^ ‘We have a Duke more winged and agile than a swallow. , . .
He is ever on his feet, and he never rests, and he is everywhere at
once/ (Letter of De Chimay, in Chastellain, t. 8.)

^ ‘Who wills to the wars,’ says an old German poem, ‘must be
well armed. What shall he take with him? A comely Frauelein^
a long pike and a short dagger.’

* ‘ Whence the glory should be attributed to the feminine sex. And
certes it was a sumptuous enterprise and of high efficacy, the account
whereof shall be hard to believe in future days.’ (Molinet.)

THE SIEGE OF NEUSS 147

and barred as effectually as the smallest postern gate.
When the Margrave Albert Achilles of Brandenburg,
Commander-in-Chief ofthe Imperial Army, approached
with a fleet to revictual the beleaguered city, Duke
Charles threw across the great water-way an iron
chain with links as thick as a man’s leg, strongly
fortified at both ends and bristling with quartans and
culverins.^ Once the ships were on the chain, the
guns were to be loosed off upon them. Boats full
of soldiers were also posted at the sides, that, when
the artillery had ‘deafened and disordered’ the rash
visitors, these might slay and drown any who survived.
No sooner, however, had the Margrave heard of the
welcome awaiting him, than he turned him about and
* left that town unfed.’

A yet more practical and terrible use for rivers was
revealed when a certain Imperial nobleman (‘not
always in his right senses, but to ail seeming an
honest person, foolhardy enough ’) collected a band of
foot-soldiers, and, dashing off to the camp of the Bur-
gimdians, incontinently attacked them. ‘ So they shot
and thrust all together, and in both armies a marvel-
lous great tumult and commotion sprang up.’ But
Duke Charles, rising in wrath with all his cavalry, fell
upon the adventurous band, and pressed the madmen
back and back, till all who were not trampled or
transfixed must needs cast themselves into the Rhine
and either drown at once or, writhing in the water,
serve as St. Sebastians for the Burgundian archers.®

On the other hand, Wilwolt now witnessed the
failure of two of those great engines of assault that
were so dear to the heart of the Middle Ages.
Fashioned like castles of wood, twenty feet high and
broad, and filled with three hundred men apiece, the
Stork and the Cat (as they were called) were propelled
against the fortifications. But, conscious perhaps that
their day was already past, they only shed their wheels

^ See Illustrative Notes, 26.

* Letter of Panigarola. Cf. Kirk, Hi

148 A MASTER OF WAR

and stuck in the mud.^ Moreover, though the besiegers
made trenches so close up to the city walls that, had
they been at peace, ‘ the two sides could have reached
the hand to one another,’^ the result was regrettably
meagre. For, in the stead of peace, the townsfolk
entertained their assailants with boiling water, filth
and all uncleanness; ‘shook it over those in the
trenches ; took small faggots, besmeared them with
pitch and threw them at the Burgundians ; whereby
these were burned, seeing that the faggots were not
easy to quench. Fastened also sharp-pointed hooks
on to poles, and, whensoever any chanced to look
over, thrust the hooks into his body and dragged him
across to them. But when those outside became
aware of this, they agreed at all costs to keep their
comrades : seized them therefore and held them so
hard, that the hooks must needs tear their way out.’
Sometimes the Neussers took long roasting spits and,
making them glowing hot, thrust them through the
earth ; ‘ and when the Burgundians fell upon these
spits to take them, they burned themselves in skin and
hair and hands, and so desisted.’- Indeed, the more
primitive the method the more certain was the success
— a fact that Wilwolt was not to forget in after-days.

There was much of interest, also, for a would-be
general of armies in the astonishing manner in which
Duke Charles transformed his quarters from a swamp

^ ‘ In sorrow must they withdraw and leave that Cat standing ; the
Neussers call out consolingly : “ Ho, younkers, come inside ! *
(Wierstraat.)

* Wierstraat reproduces in his poem a curious dialogue between an
outpost of the Burgundians, *ein getruwer engelsch knecht,' and a
Neuss sentinel on the walls. The language of the Englishman leaves
much to be desired :

I naber, wat ik heb gehoirt Mach u dit belech met breiken

Hebdi dair noch lust to steiken Steekspoel mdvreuwdetomaken?. , ,

‘ Addeuw naber, gi duet iem recht 1 ’ are the last words of the ‘ gued
engelsch man ’ The English contingent at Neuss was commanded
by Lord Stanley and Sir William Parr, and had been lent by
Edward IV. for the French campaign. ‘English archers under Sir
John Mileton^ (Middleton), says Molinet ; and Commynes : ‘Three
thousand Englishmen, excellent good soldiers.'

THE SIEGE OF NEUSS 149

of snow and filth to a city of delights. In the earlier
part of the siege the Burgundians suffered the inevitable
horrors of a severe winter under canvas. But as the
months drew on the aspect. of affairs changed wholly.
The camp was now composed of wide streets and alleys,
and had two market-places, constantly replenished
with every variety of sumptuous merchandise. There
were nine hundred splendid pavilions, brought at the
Duke’s own cost and charge, with many ‘ mansions of
diverse fashionings and ingenious costliness, builded
by as admirable and solid an artifice as though to
remain for all time’; some of them, for diversion,
being in the form of great keeps, encircled by fair
galleries and gardens, and others, like castles, guarded
with drawbridges and moats. Here, too, were water-
mills, windmills and handmills, ovens, forges, taverns,
baths, hostelries, breweries, gambling houses, games
of tennis and of quintain to amuse the company, and,
not to be overlooked, ‘ a great strong gallows for to
let hang the evil-doers.’ ^

At Neuss, finally, Wilwolt learned the high art of
demeanour in the face of the foe. When, after long
delay, the vast army of the rescuers crawled within
his ken, Duke Charles assembled his troops, caused an
office of praise to be sung, partook of ‘ the all-holiest
sacrament,’ and went out ‘to find the Emperor.’

‘ And when he had found him, he turned joyfully to his
men and spoke : “ Dear friends and faithful, ye know
how that it well beseemeth us to go forth with honour
and respect to meet a Roman Emperor, and praise-
worthily to receive him ; the which I have resolved to
do with this my procession ; with — ^for goodly tapers
— ^these long spears, which each man must hold high-
poised upon his leg ; with the cuirassiers and others
with their head-harness on their heads and their war-
horses all barded and bedecked : that thus, all brave, we
shall greet him as, since he was Emperor, he hath never
been greeted.” With these and the like words, he

* Molinet.

ISO A MASTER OF WAR

rode to every troop and company, comforting and
counselling each one to do his best.’ This inspiring
moment formed, indeed, a second great landmark in
the life of Wilwolt, as it was now, and at the hands of
the great hero of the occasion, that he was for the
second time dubbed knight.

Nor, even when lurking in his tent, was this Achilles
a less striking ensample of knightly behaviour. During
a brief truce for the discussion of peace the opposing
armies overran each other’s camps with unflagging
curiosity. For three days the landsknechts forced
their way unceasingly into the most private recesses
of Charles’s pavilion, and for three days they threw
themselves on their knees and adored him ‘ as though
he were a new-discovered saint.’ ^ Yet the Duke was
never moved to impatience, and for all the three days
he played his part, unperturbed and magnanimous,
entertaining his visitors with gold pieces and un-
limited wine, and soothing their savage breasts with
music.®

But all this energy and ingenuity, however instruc-
tive for an apprentice in the trade of war, had little
practical result. The great siege dragged to a weary
ajid indecisive close, and, in June 1475, a peace was
concluded, whereby the ambitions of both sides were
left wholly unrealised, while the gain to either was
lamentably in arrears of the enormous cost.

The peace did not sever Wilwolt’s connection with
his hero, or even give him a moment’s respite to
repair the disorders of these arduous months. With-
out an instant’s delay he was transported to a scene of
even greater carnage and less distinction than Neuss.

^ Letter of Panigarola.

® The music of drums, trumpets, clarions, flutes, pipes and bagpipes
filled the air, ■writes Molinet, in one of his most fervid outbursts.
‘The veiy sweet noise of them ivas so agreeable to hear that it
seemed an earthly paradise, and a thing more divine than human ;
and as Orpheus burst the gates of hell by the sound of his harp, so
did the pleasant tuning of these instruments of music make soft the
bitterness of the rude Saxon hearts, and lull the enemy \nth its
delectable harmonies.'

THE SACK OF LORRAINE 151

For the chronicler now raises the curtain on one
scene of that last and most tragic period of the great
Duke’s career. The darkest hours of his decline were
upon him, and the ‘marvellous cruelty’ that so dis-
figured and distorted it was rapidly developing. ‘ Luy
avoit Dieu trouble le sens et I’entendement,’ writes
Commynes bitterly. Lorraine, where young Duke
Rene was striving to recover his rightful inheritance,
was the first victim of his wrath. Swift as the
leopard and fierce as the evening wolf, he scoured
and scourged the rebellious province. Town after
town was taken ; villages were laid low by the score.
His way was sown with disaster and calamity.

Eyb, though his hero was on the Burgundian side,
draws no squeamish pictures of the horrors that
then befell, and shows us, with a certain grim, if
shuddering, exultation, a landscape worthy to rank as
a circle of Dante’s Hell. For on all sides, so far as eye
could reach, each tree was dropping human fruit.
Every man that could fight was seized and hung on
high, and so many were the victims that gallows and
hangmen were all too few. Even the branches that
sheltered the Burgundian troops were not free of the
hideous fruitage, and on the tree under which Wilwolt
and two friends had pitched their tent no less than
thirty-seven corpses were swinging. Many of them,
too, were hung so low that when any wished to go in
or out of the doorway, he must needs bend down or hit
against the dangling feet. At last a bough broke that
had on it seven of these shapes of grief ‘ knocking and
knobbling,’ and now the legs of them jutted even into
the tent. * Yet might they by no means be removed,
seeing that Duke Charles was so mighty, determined
and dreaded a prince, that none dared do such a thing
without his orders or consent.’

Day and night the ghastly work went on, and when
there seemed danger that for the lack of time some
few of the poor wretches might not get ‘rightly
adjusted,’ Charles had recourse to a notable shift

152 A MASTER OF WAR

that was later to do brutal service at the siege of
Granson : sparing the lives of two of the prisoners on
condition that they should help to hang their com-
rades. A pathetic scene followed, for of these two one
was but a serving-lad, and it fell to his lot to dispatch
his master. ‘ Then was the servant grievously troubled,
and he said unto his master that he would seek some
way whereby he might be freed. But the captain
answered : “ I am bound to die ; and I would gladlier
receive death from thee, that thy life may be saved,
than suffer it from any other.” And many beautiful
words were spoken by them both. And since it
might not be otherwise, the servant adjusted his
master, and when he was about to push him off, he
prayed his pardon, and after the pushing he trod on
both his shoulders, that the cord might draw the
tighter, and his lord be the speedier quit of his pain.
Yet the business lasted so long, that they were hanging
by the light of torches and straw-flares, even till the
twelfth hour of the night.’

Suddenly Charles tired of the entertainment, and
dashed on to fresher fields. And then, we are assured,
Wilwolt and his two friends remained not long in
their charnel tent. But even so they found no land
of milk and honey, and for days they starved without
so much as a bite of bread, living on grapes alone,
which they pressed out and ‘ made into must.’ Soon,
too, the country was a prey to that universal foe, the
pestilence.

The fresher fields to which Charles had betaken him-
self were Alsace and the fateful slopes of Switzerlemd.
At this juncture, however, Wilwolt and his friends —
having been ‘ for two whole years, summer and winter,
in the field, with their armour ruined, the clothes on
their bodies fouled, and their horse-housings turned to
naught ’ — applied for a holiday of four weeks, for the
purpose of recaparisoning their lank-lean cheeks and
war-worn coats in the city of Spires. During this
interval they received news of Charles’s first great

THE DOWNFALL OF BURGUNDY 153

defeat, and though they keenly desired to rejoin their
master, there was ‘ so sore a tumult and uprising in the
land ’ that they could not get through to him.

Here, then, ends Schaumburg’s connection with the
great Duke, and his biographer gives in consequence
but scanty details of the final tragedy. Having
briefly recorded the disaster of Granson and the rout
of Morat,^ he tells of the return to Nancy, where
Charles’s army, deserted by the traitor Campobasso,
already twice beaten and filled with ‘hatred, terror
and weariness,’ found the Swiss and Lorrainers again
facing them, and this time with an overwhelming
force. ‘ And when the Duke learned this,’ writes Eyb,
in melancholy but not unspirited conclusion, ‘he
caused the horns to be blown, and thrust in with all
his might and all his artillery to meet them, and the
skirmishing began, and thereafter the battle, and on
either side were there many good and knightly blows ;
but the cavalry on the Austrian and Lorraine side broke
through, and then followed the Swissers with the foot-
men, and the Duke (God be gracious to him) and many
of his people were killed.* And they who were present
reckon that in the three actions he lost over forty
thousand men, and there were won all the pieces of
artillery, silver plate, clothes, jewels and money, that
he and his princes had with them, which must, without
doubt, seeing the splendour as before narrated, where-

^ ‘ And so the ryche saletts, heuimetts, garters, nowchys gelt, and alle
is gone, with tents, pavylons, and alle, and soo men deme hys pryde
is abatyd. Men tolde hym that they weer ffrowarde karlys, butte he
wolde nott beleve it, and yitt men seye, that he woll to them ageyn.
Code spede them both/ (Letter of Sir John Paston, March 1476.)

* Among some soldiers of Schaumburg who, many years later, were
* shamefully hung ’ at the little town of Sesting in the Netherlands,
Eyb mentions one ‘ Hans von HoUdrit with the one eye, the which
he had lost in knightly deeds, an honest, pious, true man he was ;
and on him they cast the guilt, that with his hand he had slain Duke
Charles in battle before Nancy. But this was naught but their
malicious wickedness. And first they cut off his hand, wherewith he
was held to have done it, and inflicted upon him much torture and
pain* And in the end they hanged him also. And the worthy man
was by one and all sorely and dearly lamented*^

1 54 A MASTER OF WAR

with he was wont to journey, have been a marvellous
mighty and incredible possession.’

Thus, miserably, vanished the dominion of Burgundy.
The great game, whereof our Wilwolt was so modest
a pawn, was at an end, and the great gamester, whose
like would not reappear for thrice a hundred years, had
met with his Moscow and his Waterloo. His body,
naked and gnawed by dogs, lay unrecognised in a
ditch.^ His innumerable treasure was apportioned
unto others. And his enemies were ravished with
exceeding joy.® ‘A passionate player,’ so runs the
chronicler’s final lament over Charles of Burgundy :
‘ he would ever fit his purse to his money, and despised
all disaster; yet are little wounds and contemptible
enemies often hurtful.’

Ill

Wilwolt, disillusioned, now returned to his family,
only to be faced by ‘ a high house, empty below and
not having much above ; seeing that his blessed father
had left many children behind him, whereof some must
be helped in religion and others in the world, whence
men say : Much sharing maketh small shares. ’ ® He
determined, therefore, not to remain at home, but —
like many another gentleman of Germany — to follow
the path on which he had already so bravely adven-
tured, and find a career beneath any standard of
fortune that might chance to wave him a welcome.
This period of his life becomes, indeed, almost

^ Lui qui eut d’or un million find,

D’hommes autant et estoit si grant maistre,

Tant fut desfaict et tant extermmd,

Qu’d peine nul ne le povoit congnoistre . . .

Longtemps y a qu’il fut prophetisd :

Cent ans as creu, tout se paye en une heure.

(Poem written in defiance of Duke Philip the Good, and strangely
justified by the fate of his son. Cf. Lettenhove.)

* ‘ This newes at the first so ravished the King [Louis XI.] with joy^
that he wist not what countenance to shew.’ (Commynes.)

* See Illustrative Notes, 27.

IN THE RANKS OF BRANDENBURG 155

extravagantly chequered and picturesque. Battles,
sieges, jousts and courses follow one another with an
amazing and embarrassing prodigality, and his daily
experiences of warfare and wayfare more than ever
resembled those that befell ‘ in days of yore when
the ancient knights of the Round Table rode forth
alone to seek adventures.’ In brief, ‘ what this Schaum-
burg performed of strange and hitherto unpractised
courses, tiltings and tournaments,’ together with other
achievements in manful and mighty sort, ‘ would be a
marvel to write of.’

His first patron was Albert Achilles of Brandenburg,
a prince whom at Neuss he had met as honourable foe,
and ‘ whose like for splendour and princeliness was not
to be found in German lands.’ In this famous court
time passed pleasantly, ‘ after the wont of such places,’
with feastings and feats of arms ; in the which matters
Wilwolt, needless to say, proved an adept, winning
the love of many comely ladies, being ever ‘ gentle,
jocund and apt to jests,’ and spending his Burgundian
money so lavishly that it soon melted away. But the
youthful knight’s nature ' strove ever after strife and
knightly gains, rather than after merriment and
sloth,’ and he was soon to the fore in the Glogau-
Crossen War of Succession,^ fighting in the troops
of his patron’s son, the young Margrave Hans. On
the battlefields of Silesia and Pomerania he quickly
won fame, occupying, despite his youth, posts of
responsibility and honour, putting into practice many
of the ingenuities which he had learned from Duke
Charles, and, above all, earning an enviable reputation
for unselfish gallantry. At the battle of Crossen, for
instance, which seems to have been a singularly
horrible and indiscriminate affair,® ‘ my pious Wilwolt ’

^ One of the claimants was Barbara, daughter of Albert Achilles
and widow of the dead Duke, and the other, Duke Johann of Sagan,
to whom the chronicle commonly alludes as Hans of Sachsen, which
IS confusing.

* * With such a rushing onset did friend and foe transpierce one
another ; for they were so thickly wrapped in dust, that none could

156 A MASTER OF WAR

sacrificed all hope of plunder — ‘ and the mighty ones
of the land are wont to have much and good with
them ’ — ^for the sake of recovering the body of a dead
friend; while at the storming of the Castle of Satz,
having seen his uncle hurled from the ladders and
lying helpless in an exposed place, he abandoned all
personal profit and advantage, sprang to the half-dead
man, dragged him out of range of the stones and
shot, and supported him in his arms till the attack
was at an end. ' Now, one may well reflect upon
this,’ comments Eyb, ‘that a great and mighty love
and faithfulness overbeareth all self-interest and fear
of receiving injury; and albeit Wilwolt was still
wrestling with poverty, and to see others profiting
made the time seem long, since through his self-
appointed trouble and labour but little gain fell to his
share: yet did he reckon the saving of his kinsman
for guerdon enough.’

Indeed, the question of gain and guerdon was one
of no inconsiderable importance, for at this moment,
apart from plunder, ‘ the noble Wilwolt had upon
his horse but eight florins only and no more for his
expenses : the which in truth is no great beginning
in a strange land.’ The embarrassment was grave for
a man of knightly feeling. Fortunately Wilwolt was
also a man of resource, and well acquainted with the
noteworthy shifts and stratagems practised by indigent
heroes of all times. Had he not, indeed, ransomed his
life in a brawl at Neuss by the promise of 20,000
florins, although at the time barely able to name
himself the possessor of one ? ‘ The which foresight
is much to be praised,’ justly observes his biographer,

‘ for in such a pass to think quickly is a token of manly
and undaunted valour.’

On this occasion he made a bargain of reciprocal
benefit with his landlord, whereby all the spoils of

recognise the other nor see the standards, whence the slaying went
on all amongst one another ; and when this had lasted for a goodly
while there happened a flight in the ordnance, but none knew who
bad conquered or who was fleeing.’

SPOILS or VICTORY 1$;

his fighting were forthwith to be passed on in return
for the daily necessaries of furniture and fare. And so
fruitful were the labours of his less altruistic moments,
that the climax was triumph. For when the time
came for departure not only were his lodging debts
covered, but at least 150 florins were owing to him
from the astonished and reluctant innkeeper. ‘Once
more the noble hero displayed a splendid good sense,’
for he went instantly to the burgomaster of the town,
and demanded to know what the custom was if a
guest were in debt to his host. Said the burgomaster :
‘ If the host will not lend or trust, he may hinder the
guest with his horses, goods and chattels from leaving
the house until all be paid.’ ‘ And what if the host
owes the guest?’ then asked Wilwolt. The burgo-
master, amazed, replied that, if the landlord did not
satisfy the lodger, it was the custom to erect four
posts round his dwelling, and if the guest were not
paid or pleased by three days thereafter, he could
help himself to all that was in the house. Wilwolt
then explained his case, and, while the burgomaster
sent for the innkeeper, joyfully planted the four posts
round the culprit’s home and hearth. Nor were these
removed until the host had presented him with twenty
florins, praying him submissively to have patience,
and he would honourably pay the remainder. In point
of fact, plunder was a leading feature of this campaign,
and contributed in no small degree to Wilwolt’s enjoy-
ment of life. Thus, when certain Ruthenes were slaip
and beheaded by the nobles of the country that they
were seeking to ravage. Margrave Hans and his
comrades sent instantly to fetch in all the appurten-
ances of the victims, arrayed themselves in their
armour and clothing, mounted upon their horses, and
in this manner, tilting with the Ruthene spears and
targets, caracoled proudly before Albert Achilles and
his Anne.^ When the courses were at an end, they

^ The long and affectionate correspondence between this Margrave
and Margravine of Brandenburg forms a very human, if <rften untrans-

158 A MASTER OF WAR

even turned in the same ‘ garments of the dead ’ to
a ball, achieving in the flesh as lively a Danse Macabre
as was ever painted by Holbein or his forerunners.

But the special field of Schaumburg’s exploits of
gallantry and romance was Franconia.

In truth, if fighting were your warmest wish, no
better home could be discovered for you than Franconia
at the close of the fifteenth century. Here, to an
even greater degree than in other portions of the
Empire,^ ‘ quarrels were seldom at rest,’ and if, as was
said, this powerful province was the knightly garden
of Germany, it was a garden that undoubtedly grew
strange flowers. ‘ At this time,’ declares the historio-
grapher, who views the vagaries of the last generation
from the slightly more civilised standpoint of the
year 1 507, ‘ it was usual for the small knighthood, to
wit, certain barons and lords, to make business to-
gether, whereby houses were seized, villages plundered
and burned, cattle taken and such-like trades driven.’
It was, in fact, the lawless period immediately pre-
ceding the birth of the Suabian League, and all High
Germany was in the grip of her lesser knights and
nobles.

For the German Ritters were celebrating in
characteristic fashion the sunset hours of their brilliant
and boisterous career. All over Europe their upstart
and plebeian rivals, the ‘fire-machines,’ were hourly
gaining ground, and hourly their immemorial pro-
fession of arms was passing to others. Round them,
unruly and ubiquitous, swarmed the new-born

latabk, document. ^ I pray your Grace to give me news often/ writes
Anne to her ‘heart’s dearest lord’ at the siege of Neuss : ‘the time
is very long to me when no messenger comes. Even when I send
messages, the hours are just as slow. . , . You tell me to write to you
jesting words ; but all jesting has gone out of me and my maidens, for
that your Grace has been so long away and has gone so far off : we
have forgotten how to jest/ {Privatbriefen,)

^ ‘To speake generally of Almaine, there are so many strong
places there, so many men inclined to mischiefe, to spoil, to rob, and
that use force and violence one against another upon small occasions,
that it is a woonder to see/ (Commynes.)

LIFE IN FRANCONIA

battalions of the landsknechts, furnished with cannon
and hand-guns of ever-increasing efficiency; and,
where once the rushing hosts of knighthood had taken
the world with courage and beauty, there were now
to be seen the scurvy insubordinate ranks of the
footmen, creeping to victory by the unhallowed potency
of unnatural arms.^ What, then, were these unlucky
survivals of a more gallant past to do? Too proud
or too incapable to practise peaceful industries, their
lawful living hung upon the small and precarious
wage that some few of them were able, by the sale of
their swords — and not infrequently of their souls — ^to
obtain. As for the others, with no possessions save
crumbling walls and antiquated armour, little remained
for them save those time-honoured resources of
distressed chivalry : the arts of the highwayman and
the freebooter. To these accordingly the poor gentle-
men of Germany had turned with a glad alacrity, and
in the country districts their power was supreme.*
Murderous and menacing, they maintained an easy
rule of fear. No paltry scruples of justice or legality
held their hands, and fat burghers and lean peasants
were alike their constant prey.

Wilwolt, therefore, was never at a loss. If by chance
his masters and kinsmen failed to supply him with a
sufficiency of feuds, if for a brief moment he had
nothing to do, either for himself or for his particular
friends, he had but to turn to these professional and
practised peace-breakers, ‘ serving in the said businesses
all the good comrades who wrote to him, craving only

* ‘ Que pleust i. Dieu que ce malheureux instrument n’eust jamais ^t^
invent^ . . . tant de braves et vaillans hommes ne fussent mortz de la
main le plus souvent du plus poltronz et du plus lasche, qui n’oseroient
regarder au visage celuy que de loing ils renversent de leurs
malheureuses balles par terre. Mais ce sent des artifices du diable
potm nous feire entretuer.’ (Montluc.) ‘Not every one can stand
their din,’ says Gdtz von Berlichingen.

‘A man that is able to maintaine but himselfe and his servant . . .
■roll have some small casteU situate upon a rocke to retire mto, where
he entertaineth twentie or thirtie horsemen, which run downe to rob
and spoile the countrie at his commandement.’ (Commynes.)

i6o A MASTER OF WAR

food for himself and fodder for his horse : whereby he
deserved well of them, and earned great repute and
recognition among the princes and knighthood.’ To
be short, as Eyb observes, his life demonstrated the
truth of the proverb, ‘ whoso loveth not play, findeth
ever work to his hand.’

But besides this glut of illegitimate joys,^ there was
a wealth of more lawful excitement. For Franconia
was also a centre of all the exercises of chivalry, and
had for her share no less than four of the famous
tourney-companies, into which the knighthood of
Germany was at this time divided. Schaumburg
himself belonged to the Order of the Unicom, and
achieved many admirable exploits under its auspices,
taking part, especially, in the great tournaments
which were arranged after the ancient manner — ‘ as
they were done in olden days ’ ® — at Wttrzburg and at
Mainz.

This last, indeed, became the scene of a personal
quarrel on the part of Wilwolt. For there came to
it one Martin Zolner, against whom the Schaumburg
family nourished an ancient and violent grievance.
Complaint of the offence and of his insolence in thus
appearing in the company of honourable men was
duly made before the knighthood of the Four Lands,
Bavaria, Suabia, Franconia and the Rhineland;® but
Martin answered the charge with lying words.
Wilwolt therefore determined to settle the affair after
his own fashion, and having opened the matter by a

^ The Franconians regarded these delights as eminently legitimate.
Thus, when a friar once advocated the hanging of all thieves and
murderers in their boots and spurs (‘ Ho, ho P he said, ‘ that would
be a joyous spectacle ’) the nobles who were present were beyond
measure incensed and demanded his death : ‘ for they hold that they
are entitled by a pretended ancient privilege to commit robberies in
the highways and to take what belongs to others without let or
hindrance.^ {Ziminerische Chronik^ ‘ There are two not insignificant
crimes that Franconians prize unduly,’ wrote Boemus Aubanus : ' swear-
ing and robbing ; they deem them admirable, and by long use permitted.’

Meaning that they were genuine tournaments, and not mere jousts
or tiltings.

® See Illustrative Notes, 28.

THE TOURNAMENT OF MAINZ i6i

genial promise ‘to thrust his lies down his throat,’
got quickly to business. He passed a sleepless night
deciding on his plan of action. But it was well
worth while, for the result was triumphant. No
sooner had the combatants been packed into their
respective corners of the ground, and the cords been
severed,^ than Wilwolt’s servant seized his master’s
horse by the reins,* and piloted him up to Martin
Zolner, who, being taken wholly by surprise, was
without difficulty bound and ‘ bridled.’ This done, up
came all Wilwolt’s friends, and together they dragged
the culprit out of his tilting saddle, ‘ even up to his
spurs,’ laid him on the back of his horse, beat him on
the stomach till he fell to the ground, heaved him
up again, and finally cut the girths and set him astride
the lists on his saddle, ‘ even like a man who has
earned the tournament penalty.’ Nor was the un-
fortunate Martin permitted any revenge, for although
on their way home — the Franconians, for their better
protection, rode away all together — he tried hard to
induce Wilwolt to fight in the open field, ‘ making
much strange display with his spear, running hither
and thither near the company wherein Wilwolt rode,
shouting and acclaiming ’ ; and though Schaumburg,

‘ bethinking him that it would be a disgrace were he
to suffer this,’ rushed out at him, and they thrust with
their lances at one another’s throats : yet their friends
quickly separated them, recalling to their memories
that a man who sought revenge for anything that
had happened in the lists was, with his descendants,
‘eternally robbed of tourney and nevermore permitted
to tilt.’

^ The various tourney companies were packed in the four comers
of the ground, each held in by a cord : ‘ All these thinges donne thei
were embatailed eche ageynste the othir, and the corde drawen before
eche partie, and whan the tyme was, the cordes were cutt, and the
trumpettes blew up for every man to do his devoir.’ (Cf, Strutt.)

* This seems to imply that Wilwolt wore the heavy closed jousting
helmet, rather than the barred heaume used in the mellay. (Cf.
Jusserand.)

i 62

A MASTER OF WAR

At Stuttgart, again, a tournament took place, ‘so
serious that I verily believe that in our time the like
has never been undertaken or held.’ Here, too, there
was question of a private quarrel, for the Margrave
Frederick of Brandenburg brought with him 125
champions of the flower of Germany and arraigned
the Lord Jorg of Rosenberg before the Four Lands.
The Court ordered the disputants to settle their
differences by single combat, but the Margrave was
not satisfied and meditated more stringent methods.
Meanwhile Rosenberg appealed to the company of
the Unicom to support him : and these accordingly
assembled on the ground. They were but 35
champions strong as against the 125 of the Prince;
but they meant winning, and they won.

No sooner were the ropes cut than the mass of
the Brandenburgers urged forward, but the Unicorn
men held to their corner, and presented so brave
a front — ‘well and truly made by their captains’ —
that it defied all the efforts of the Margrave to break
it. The throng became so dense that the horses
‘ squealed like pigs,’ and so thick was the cloud of
steam rising from the combatants that the ladies in
the windows could scarce see the fight. Wilwolt
had on his right hand Rosenberg and on his left
one Diez Marschalk, and they were so hard pressed
that they were soon all three unhorsed and pros-
trate, both their tilting-helms and they themselves
being so sorely trampled that they were near to
losing their lives. Frederick, however, retired to
consider the position ; and the Unicorns were en-
abled to give their comrades breathing-space, and
to have them lifted on to their horses by the
sergeants.

The Margrave now marshalled his men in three
separate bands, intending to attack front, back and
sides in one giant effort. But the Captains of the
Unicorn, discerning his stratagem, prepared to defeat
it. Indeed, reflecting sagaciously that Frederick was

THE TOURNAMENT OF STUTTGART 163

young and would certainly ride first in order to be
well seen of the ladies, they agreed upon a plan of
some ingenuity : namely, to open their ranks before him
as though they were giving way, and to close them
again as promptly behind the crupper of his horse.
The device succeeded amazingly, and in a moment
FVederick was alone among the enemy and hurled
from his charger, while his men, leaderless and
disorganised by the sight of his fall, retired igno-
miniously to their own corner. The Unicorns made
room for the sergeants to pick up the Margrave,
and as he was far more firmly fastened to his saddle
than was the saddle to the horse, they cut the
girths, led the barebacked charger away and set
the unfortunate prince, saddle and all, on the lists.
This made the spectators think that he had been
* beaten and seated on the lists,’ and even the Unicorns
were moved to pity. One of them, indeed, offered to
take him back to his comrades on his own horse.
But the victim feared that he would look ridiculous
seated behind one of his opponents, so sent for a man
of his own retinue.

Mounting his charger afresh. Margrave Frederick
next sought to break up the ranks of the Unicom
by inviting them to take prematurely to their swords,
but the affair ended in words rather than in blows,
and the Lord Jorg of Rosenberg ‘ remained unbeaten.’
On the following day the ladies of the Suabian
nobility, who had been present in the tiltyard, invited
the whole company of the Unicom to a splendid
banquet, and being, ‘ as is common with Suabish
ladies, rich in elegant, lovely and subtle words,’ ^
they praised the heroes well, declaring that they had
borne themselves superbly, and desiring to know the
name of each man, that the deed might be held in
long remembrance by their children. Albert Achilles,

‘ ‘There are certain women by nature cheerful, gay, and talkative,
and amongst others are Suabians . . . es^^ially forthcoming to
every one, and furactised in music and dandng.’ (Guarinonius.)

i 64 a master of war

it appears, was less delighted ; ‘ would thereafter
neither see nor hear his son, for that he had not
obeyed his commands.’^

Weddings and Diets were the most constant occasions
of valorous display, the young knights of the Four
Lands ever fighting for supremacy in the invention
of new sports for the amusement of the ladies. Thus
at the marriage of the Princess Sofia of Poland,
Wilwolt appears, tilting before her in the streets ® of
Frankfort, running his adversary ‘ through target and
plates even to the body,’ pinning him so well to the
ground, that the victor’s lance ‘stood by its roundel
straight up on end : showed most rare and adven-
turous.’ At another wedding, the panoply of the
combatants was fashioned of a garland and a mirror.
And at a third both Wilwolt and his opponent were
protected only by straw targets and feather cushions :
‘ and they beat well upon the pillows ; and the harness-
masters tore wider the holes made by the strokes, and
the wind beat the pulled-out feathers all about the
lists and bespattered the folk so that a great laughter
arose, and the maids and matrons were a merriment
to behold.’ *

Yet even these gentler entertainments seem often to
have ended in brawlings, if not in actual bloodshed.
When Wilwolt, ‘who in all his days had practised
more cuts than capers,’ failed to perform his duties

In 1481 Albert Achilles of Brandenburg had written to his son
Margrave John to tell him that the company of the Unicorn was being
revived, and that therefore himself, Margrave Frederick and others
of the family must help to reconstitute their own old company of the
‘ Perner,’ its ancient rival : ‘ We have hitherto, with God’s help, been
foremost in tourney, and we intend, with the help of God, so to remain.’
The feelings of the Elector on this occasion may therefore be
imagined.

® Bertrandon de la Brocqui^re mentions tournaments 'in the
streets,’ at which ‘ several were unhorsed so heavily that they were
dangerously wounded.’

® A similar joust took place at the Diet at Nuremberg in 1491 :

‘ Item, there came into the lists eighteen in straw helms and straw
shields, and they had kronlein (blunt lances) ; and the King (Maxi-
milian) bought the straw appurtenances for nine florins, and they
had great green well-stuffed cushions.’ (H. Deichsler.)

From a woodcut illustrating the ‘Hiatoria de Europa’ of ^Sneas Sylvius, ed. of X571.

THE FORESTS OF GERMANY 165

in the ' Lob-tanz ’ at the Court of Vogtland, and stood
stock still with the ladies, there was a great ‘ outcry
and rejoicing’ over him. The mockery was started
by a certain Schurndiger, whom Wilwolt promptly
called to account, and hereupon a friend named Conz
von Luchau, anxious to prevent bloodshed, officiously
invented a pretext for borrowing Wilwolt’s sword.
The result of this diplomacy was not, however, satis-
factory, for Schurndiger forthwith fell upon ‘the
noble hero’ in the doorway, and obliged him, being
defenceless, to take ignominious refuge in a vehicle
standing near. Sundry of the young captain’s sup-
porters now sprang to his rescue, ordering the town
gates to be closed, and many of the mockers were
beaten down and ‘ well misused.’ Nor was this the end
jof the matter, for Wilwolt determined to avenge himself
on Conz for his misplaced zeal, and shortly after, meet-
ing him in a convenient wood, heaved him a great
wound right through his cap-peak, hat and hood of
chain.

The ‘long thicke thievishe’^ German forests were,
indeed, the happy hunting-grounds both of righteous
vengeance and of meaner and more murderous deeds.
For the Germany of Schaumburg, like the Ireland of
Spenser, was filled with wandering companies that
kept the woods, and her great territories of trees had
become the favourite haunts of violence and crime.*
On one occasion Wilwolt himself nearly met death in
their dark and lonely depths, being treacherously
attacked by a roving Swiss mercenary. The valiant
knight showed, however, such singular dexterity, not
only with the sword but also with the crossbow, and
such singular courage and generosity in re-arming his
defeated assailant with his own weapon, that the two
ended by becoming warm friends, and the soldier

' Cf. Hoby. ‘ This day’s journey was much through woods, jeopard-
some for thieves,’ writes Roger Ascham.

* It is not without significance that, in the Index of a certain German
history, the heading ‘ Adel,’ nobility, has only three spb-beadings ;
|aek of money, quarrelsopieness, pride,

i66

A MASTER OF WAR

spent a roaring night in the company of many brave
Ritters, as the guest of his intended victim.

Nor amongst Wilwolt’s achievements must his most
romantic adventure be omitted. ‘ It is known,’ says
Eyb, ‘that naught on earth more enlivens and em-
boldens a young man than a pure tender virtuous
womankind: as Thomasin of Cerclar^ writeth, ‘The
nature of love is such, she maketh wiser the wise and
giveth to the fool more folly, such is the custom of
love.’ And it was without doubt the presence of
his ‘ lady and chiefest friend ’ that stirred the knight to
his highest efforts. Moreover, these efforts pleasantly
unveil a characteristic feature of the Renaissance.

For few things are more astonishing, even in that
astonishing age, than the strange blend of penury and
splendour that constantly appears in the annals of
fifteenth-century knighthood. Never was any class
more poverty-stricken than these gallant gentlemen of
misfortune, who were year by year losing their means
of livelihood and pouring their possessions into the
coffers of the great princes of merchandise and finance.
Yet year by year their passion for ornament and
luxury was growing greater ; while in the un-
numbered pageants and festivals that decorated their
days these pauper lords shone forth in a proud and
progressive magnificence of accoutrement. For the
captain of Germany as for the courtier of Italy, it was
the first need of life to have comely armour and gay
apparel, radiant weapons, horses lovely coated, scarves,
trappings and liveries, of ‘ sightlie and meerie coulors,
and rich to behoulde, wyth wittie poesies and pleasant
devises, to allure unto him chefilie the eyes of the
people.’ ® ‘What shall I say ? ’ wrote j®neas Sylvius,
‘ of the chains of the knights and of the bits of their
horses, which are of pure gold ? of their rings, belts,

^ Thomasin of Zerklare, or Tommasino di Circlaria, bom in the
Friuli about a.d. 1185, and author of Der Welhische Gast^ from which
this is a slightly incorrect quotation (v; 1179-82).

* Pajdassare Castiglione^ Th$ tr. Hoby,

THE PAGEANTRY OF GERMANY 167

and helmets blazing with gold? of their spears and
sheaths incrusted with precious stones ? ’ The tailors
were forced to make even the simplest garments of
costly stuffs, and, ‘ like artists,’ ^ to embroider them with
curious S5mibols. The richest dress must be changed
three times in a day, and each time according to the
fashion of a different country. Idle as summer dust
were the laws and statutes that sought to dam thestream.

Strange, therefore, were the shifts to which the
needy filters turned to show undisgraced in the eyes
of their fellows. Many, of course, ran frankly into
debt, and ruined their families and themselves.® Some,
again, won an honest right to gorgeous display by
carrying their swords to every market ; while a few,
like Du Guesclin at Rennes, could arrive ‘ on a miller’s
horse ’ or appear in borrowed plumes and braveries,
in the certain hope of an instant and triumphant
vindication. But there were other methods — not very
praiseworthy, indeed, yet regarded in that lively time
with a lenient eye — whereby the valiant and comely
youths of the Renaissance could garner in their
‘peacock-feathers’ and preserve their pride. And of
one of these Eyb gives a gallant example in a
chapter which, following his lead, it seems well to call
‘ The Adventure of the Lady Rich in Virtue.’ *

‘ It is right,’ begins the historian, with a bold
quotation from Ovid, ‘ that every lady of honour
should take a special love, joy and pleasure in manly,
valorous, determined men, seeing that such men, for
the sake of women, will dare and do better and

^ Butzbach.

* Cf. Thomas Murner in the Narrenbesckworung \ ‘The nobles
are bent on rivalling one another ; what one beholdeth on another,
that must he have. For this he pledgeth rents and income that he
may satisfy his whim ; and for one dancing coat he maketh a debt
of four-and-twenty hundred florins.’ See Illustrative Notes, 29.

* ‘ Sachez,’ said Guillaume de Lalaing to his famous son Jacques,
‘que peu de nobles hommes sont parvenus k la haute vertu de
prouesse et k bonne renommee, s’ils n’ont dame ou damoiselle de qui
US soient amoureux ; mais, mon fils, gardez que ce ne sqit de folle
amour ; car k tous jours vous seroit toumd k grande viiainie gt re-
proche,’ {Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing^ in Chastellain, viii. )

i68 A MASTER OF WAR

more valiantly than home-baked and womanish men.’
Now in this matter, he continues with obvious
admiration and envy, Wilwolt was by no means behind-
hand, for he was entitled to claim that a noble and
virtuous lady was bound to him in love. High and
holy were the vows and resolutions of their mutual
affection. The knight swore ‘ to order himself accord-
ing to her pleasure and will, and even till death
to suffer no matter that concerned her to be too
difficult for him to compass.’ And the fair one in
return ' declared that should he fulfil his promise, she
would nevermore leave him ; would share with him
her goods so far as might be in her power and beseem
a noble, pious and virtuous lady and be accomplished
with honour, modesty and seemliness ; and would give
ear to no vain pratings or babblings.’ Only she
strictly charged him ‘ to live knightly and honourably
in her service, for therein would she suffer neither
fault nor failure.’

So Wilwolt ordered himself according to his be-
loved’s pleasure, ruffling and lording it in all the lists
and tiltyards, shining before his fellow-men in ‘ costly
armour, in silken cloaks and appurtenances, mostly
also in hats of goodly silk and costly adornment,
having on his arms goodly golden chains and other
jewels fitting for the purpose.’ For his journeys, too,
he had goodly horses trapped to the heels, and ever
four or six running footmen, who served him on the
road in silken garments of his own colour; while
in his pocket there was always a generous allowance
of money. And this befell summer and winter alike.^

^ ‘ Toute grande dame doit pour son honneur, donner k son servi-
teur soit peu, soit prou, soit argent, soit bagues, soit joyaux, ou soit
riches faveurs . . . mais il faut en cel^ peser tout, et que Phomme
soit si discret de ne tirer de la bourse de la femme tant comme il
voudroit. Quant k moy, je me puis vanter d’avoir servy en ma vie
d’honnestes fames, et non des moindres ; mais, si j’avois voulu
prendre d’elles ce qu’elles m'ont pr^sent^ et en arracher ce que
j^eusse pu, je serois riche aujourd’huy, ou en bien, ou en argent, ou
en meubles, de plus de trente mijle escus que je ne suis/ (Brantdme,
RecuHl <ks D(mes,)

LOVE IN FRANCONIA 169

Now, there were many people who, knowing
Wiiwolt’s means and income, marvelled greatly at this,
and not a few, ‘ as is the way of the world,’ who were
exceedingly envious; and although the business was
kept very secret, the mere suspicion of it caused much
gossip among their friends. Indeed, warning was
often conveyed to the happy warrior to leave the
place, ‘else would he risk his neck and sulfer a
singular horrible end.’ His promise and the lady’s
love were nearer to his heart than the fear of death,
so he continued to journey the twenty leagues that lay
between him and his desires ; but, in order that none
should know or note his comings and goings, he went
ever swaddled in a different guise — now as a merchant
on a well-fed steed, now nobly as a German gentleman,
now tramping as a bare-foot monk, now crawling (O
potent love) like unto a leper : ‘ for ever doth love
teach unto loving men new ways and means.’

And so one day it came about that Wilwolt arrived
at the appointed meeting-place, and it behoved him
first to cross a moat, and then to climb a rock and wall
about 17 fathoms high. The lady, as usual, let down
to him from a high window a strong rope weighted
with a great knob of wax, that he might the easier be
able to feel it in the darkness. To this the joyful
lover attached his ladder, which was then drawn
upwards by his Juliet, who fixed and fastened its
hooks with loving care, that her friend might climb
securely. ‘Now, as love is ever mingled with bitter
sorrow, trouble and labour, so will the joy that springeth
therefrom be mixed with grief’ ; and as it happened
that these two had not been together for a long time, it
also happened — * and it had often chanced before ’ — ^that
when he came to her they had on either side so great
a joy that they forgot all about the ladder hanging in
the window. Hitherto kind Fortune had smiled upon
them, but to-day she did not ; and the ladder, being no
longer weighted but blowing in the wind to and fro, the
hQoks vyent out, an4 down plumped the whole eon-

170 A MASTER OF WAR

trivance over the rocks and into the water. ‘ Whereat
they were marvellously terrified. Yet did their great
love and joy in each other’s company, which caused
them to reckon all as happiness and to choose to
suffer death rather than to be parted, make the
trouble smaller.’

There was nothing to be done ; and for three days
and nights Wilwolt remained with gay acquiescence
in his delicious prison. The difficulties, indeed, were
great, for he could be given no other sustenance than
what that lady rich in virtue from her table stole,
there being in all the world none whom she dared
trust. ' Yet of Reinfall, Malvoisie and sweatmeats he
had enough, and this was not his greatest trouble.’
But at last the time came when both felt that he
neither should nor could longer remain, and the lovers
bent their brains to business. A plan was soon
devised. The lady brought two lengths of linen,
which they joined together, fastening one end to a
bar of the bedstead. This they laid athwart the
window, letting the other end of the improvised rope
fall outside. ‘And so the lady and he blessed one
another with lovely words, bringing to utterance that
which lay in both their hearts ; the which words for
their delicacy,’ adds the chronicler, with an ingenu-
ous and sorrowful candour, ‘seeing that in all my
days I have never used nor heard the like, I know
not how to write down. Yet may every worthy
man, who in his time hath known the love of woman
and conducted an honourable courtship, easily grasp
how went the way of it and how bitter was that
parting.’

This accomplished, Wilwolt put on a pair of gloves,
which the thoughtfulness of his hostess had also
provided, commended himself to the grace of God ‘ in
this rashness of descending the walls and rocks,’ and
pushed off into the void. As for the dame, she ‘ laid
hold in all honesty of the bedpost to cling on to it,
lest it should give way and suffer her all-belovedest to

LOVE IN FRANCONIA 171

fall.’ But at once there occurred a terrible hitch, for
the amiable lady had forgotten that her hands would
be under the bar to which the linen was fastened ; and
now she found that it crushed them so cruelly that
she could but shriek aloud, ‘ Help, Mary, mother of
God ! thou breakest my hands.’

This, of course, greatly alarmed ‘ the good knight,’
who was not yet down from the wall ; but luck chanced
that with his feet he found a nail that was in a cross-
beam or band of the house. On this he stood and
supported himself till the lady had freed her hands,
and could give him to understand what had befallen
her. He then made ready to start again, but his own
hands were so badly cut, even through his gloves,
that he could no longer use them, and he was forced
to grasp the linen in both arms and press it to him as
best he might : ‘ fell indeed into great terror and
trouble, for he knew not how high he yet was from
the bottom.’ By excellent fortune he lighted without
hurt and without discovery upon a heap of manure,
which the grooms had cast forth from the stables.
So he rose up swiftly and malodorously and fled into
a near wood : * left the road, did as doeth the wolf that
hath robbed a village,^ glanced often around him lest
any should follow ; but he saw no man.’

It is good to add that the story does not end on
this unsavoury note. For the dear lady bad sewn
somewhat into a little bundle that was hanging on
his back, and, once safe in the wood, the lover was
taken with a curiosity — ^knowing not what might be
therein — ^to behold the gift. ‘ Unstitched it therefore,
found comely work of goodly shirts, of golden caps,
with strings of pearls and a goodly golden chain, with
a golden cross wherein were set five costly diamonds,
and much else whereby he might discover the love
and favour of the lady, since jewels and goods are

* ‘Es guerres a eu toujours trois excellentes choses, et qui bien
afl5^rent k parfeict chevalier ! assault de l^vrier, deflFensc de sangli^
tt foyte de loup,’ {C^omgue de Bayart^

172 A MASTER OF WAR

wooers.’^ And thus, once more singing and proud,
Wilwolt reached his home.

Yet, even in this shining April of his life, Franconia
could not hold for long the young knight’s restless feet
and wandering spirit. And he was soon abandoning
these gallant pleasures for the sake of accomplishing
a second Italian journey in the train of Duke Ernest
of Saxony. The adventure ended in tragedy, for on
the homeward way death took his much-loved master.
Count William of Henneberg, from him.

The calamity is painted with a vivid and sympathetic
brush. The travellers had achieved their purpose'and
were already approaching Botzen, when the Count
was seized with illness, and quickly became so weak
that he began to fall from off his horse. His men, in
sore trouble and grief, lifted him to the ground and
laid him by the side of the road ; ‘ and he called upon
the Almighty with great earnestness and industry, not
to suffer him to die thus roofless and in the open field.’
Wilwolt fortunately espied a peasant bearing manure,
whom he persuaded, with a florin, to act as guide
to the nearest hamlet. There he borrowed, for many
florins, two beds and a waggon, and so transported
his lord to the village inn. In this ungracious
hospital the sick man suffered for eleven days, and
then met death with a valiant spirit. For when he felt
that his time was near, he asked to be given the death-
taper or candle, and, when Wilwolt placed this in his
hand, he seized it joyfully ‘ and began to shout, even
as though it were a lance, which he had greatly
practised in the lists; and after the said shout, he
declaimed right earnestly : Thou evil enemy, thou
hast no hold upon me, and I will overcome thee with
this spear.’ Thereafter he prayed his friend to give

' Eyb’s favourite poet, Thomasin of Zerklare, takes a higher view :

* If one could buy love, love were a slave ; but verily love is free.
Whoso thinketh to buy love for pelf, he knoweth neither love nor the
soul. . . . One shall give heart for heart, one shall for faith give faith,
one shall with love gain love, one shall with steadfastness win ftea4"
fasta^?§ and truth.’ (v. 1243—56.)

ALBRECHT OF THE BOLD HEART 173

him ‘St. John’s name ' to drink.^ ‘And he took from
him the wine, drank a good draught, took the crucifix,
pressed it heartily to his breast, prayed God right
earnestly to protect him with His grace : the which
he would not leave doing, while reason was yet in
him; took then once more the candle, and so was
bereft of speech. But Wilwolt of Schaumburg urged
him ever to be and remain firmly in the Christian faith,
to the which he made signs of glad assent Shortly
thereafter his heart brake, so that ^ let forth a great
sob, and all declared, who had been at his parting,
that they had never seen or beheld a more godly or
reasonable ending by any man in all our time. May
the merciful and eternal God be gracious unto him.’

Sad and forlorn, Wilwolt returned to Germany, and
soon after took service under Maximilian’s great
general, the Saxon Duke Albrecht der Beherzte,* ‘ of
the Bold Heart.’ So he embarked upon a friendship
that lasted till the call of death, and so at length (after
a brief campaign against Matthias of Hungary) begins
his arduous career as a leader of Maximilian’s lands-
knechts in that ever-seething pot of rioting and
righteousness, the Netherlands.*

The young Captain arrived in the Low Countries at
the most acute moment of Maximilian’s contest with

^ * Sant Johans namen.^ The * S. Johannestrunk ’ was a fiarewell-
cup, conveying the hope of future meeting. When the boy Johannes
Butzbach was sent out into the world at the age of twelve, his father
gave him the ‘ Johannisminne ’ to drink, with these words ; ‘ Farewell
in the Lord. May He make you happy with us eternally.’ The
Jerusalem pilgrims drank it when leaving Venice.

* Albertus Animosus, founder of the Albertine line of Saxon princes,
and twin hero of the Prinzenraub, See Carlyle’s Miscellanies^ voL vii.

® ‘The Netherlands have been for many yeares, as one may say,
the very Cockpit of Christendome, the Schoole of Armes, and Ren-
dezvous of all adventurous Spirits, and Cadets, which makes most
Nations of Europe beholden to them for Soldiers. Therefore the
History of the Belgique wars are very worth the reading, for I know
none fuller of stratagemes, of reaches of Pollicy, of variety of successes
in so short a time.’ (HowelL)

174 A MASTER OF WAR

his stiff-necked subjects. A few years only had passed
since the brilliant young son of Frederick III. had
ridden as a bridegroom into Ghent, amid the acclama-
tions of the people, mounted on a great chestnut horse,
accoutred in armour of silver, and with his streaming
hair bound by a circle of precious jewels : ' looking so
glorious in his youngness,’ writes an eye-witness, ‘ so
strong in his manliness, so glad in his joy, that I know
not which to marvel at most — the beauty of his youth,
the bravery of his manhood, the promise of his future
or the chivalry of his knightage.’ More lately still he
had been crowned King of the Romans at Aix ‘with
a great splendour.’ Yet his sovereignty, in his northern
dominions at least, was but a sanguine dream. Freed
from the compelling grasp of Charles the Bold, who
had a method all his own for gathering grapes of
thorns and figs of thistles, the great merchant cities
of the Netherlands waxed fat and kicked. Indignant
at the expenses of the French War and jealous of thp
interference of Germany, they progressed speedily
from discontent to rebellion ; and, on the death of their
hereditary ruler, Mary of Burgundy, the crisis came.

The first act of the rebels, who followed the lead of
Ghent and Bruges, had been to seize and guard the
young Archduke Philip ; their second venture, accom-
plished by the aid of French intrigue, was the capture
and imprisonment of Maximilian himself. Lured into
Bruges by the hope of a compromise, the King of the
Romans found himself suddenly cut off from his
friends and wholly at the mercy of the townsmen.

‘ Now they of Bruges in Flanders,’ so runs our history,
‘where the Royal Majesty would fain have had his
dwelling, encompassed him about. Albeit he was not
their God, yet did they unto him even as the Jews,
taking him, their very lord, with all his regents and
nobles who had ruled in the said land.^ Yet did the

‘ Did Calvete forget this episode in the life of his master’s ancestor
when he wrote that ‘ They of Bruges are of all Flemings the most
courteous, liberal and af&ble ’ ?

THE BURGHERS OF BRUGES 175

Jews, when the Word was fulfilled, let Jesus our Lord
free. But these held the King prisoned in a pothecary’s
house, ^ pitched their tents in front thereof in the
market-place, to guard and keep him, and each day
brought one of his regents or captains before his
Majesty on to the market-place, laid him openly on the
shambles or rack in sight of the King, and when they
had for a goodly while thus tortured and tormented
him, cut off his head. How consoling this was to
the pious King, who saw all his folk thus martyred
and murdered, each honest man may suppose; and
the King was fully persuaded that in the end his turn
also would come to pay the reckoning.’

But meanwhile, ‘not unreasonably,’ the Emperor
had roused the Empire to arms, and through the pale
spring landscape of Flanders was thronging the
dreaded host of the German landsknechts. The
peasants, appalled, fled from their homes, and even the
men of Bruges were seized ‘ with a mighty quaking and
terror.’ This lively fear does not seem, however, to
have impaired the alert and business-like spirit of the
burghers, and, though Maximilian was at once released,
it was only on the most ignominious conditions.
Nor was he allowed to depart till his cousin and best
commander, Philip of Cleves,* took upon him the
impleasant office of hostage.

The conditions Frederick, again ‘ not unreasonably,’
declined to fulfil. Taking up his quarters in Ghent,
he set himself to the work of chastisement.

But chastisement proved no such easy matter as had
confidently been hoped. ‘They got nothing there-
from,' says Eyb, ‘ save that in the country round they

^ Tlie Craenenbourg, the finest house in the market-place. The
accounts for the bolts and bars now hastily provided are still in exist-
ence, though Olivier de la Marche seems to have exaggerated when
he describe Maximilian as confined in ‘ une cage de gros hois, toute
&rr6e de fer.*

* Later Sire de Ravenstein. He was a son of Duke Adolph L of
Cleves. His grandmother was a sister of Philip the Good, and he
was therefore second cousin to Mary of Burgundy.

176 A MASTER OF WAR

burned, sacked and plundered, caught and captured
peasants, and seized all the horses and cows.’ Even
Wilwolt’s achievements during these first few months
were unimportant and of varying success, and he
‘had a bitter mouth, since how much soever he
worked, he could make but little way.’ Soon, how-
ever, the Emperor and his son were compelled to go
southwards to confront their growing difficulties with
Austria and France. So they yielded the conduct of
the campaign into the capable hands of Duke Albrecht
of Saxony, and it was as the trusted friend and hench-
man of this prince that Wilwolt now suffered the most
of his ‘ Round-Table-like adventures.’ His rank at
the outset was but that of a captain of hand-gunners
but he was a favourite with his master, -and when
death removed Ernst von SchOnburg from the post
of Chief Captain, it was to Wilwolt that the coveted ,
honour was assigned.

Here, then, is ‘ the dear hero ’ in the thick of a civil
war as ferocious and unsparing as even that age of
civil wars could produce. On either side were
experienced generals and ample forces. And on either
side were men as reckless of life as they were ruthless
of death.

The leading antagonist and, to Eyb, the villa^
of the piece, was Philip of Cleves. For the noble
hostage, refusing the thankless part of scapegoat that
had been allotted to him by Maximilian, had become
the pivot of Flemish resistance, and was now supported
both by the rebellious cities and by an army from
France under the command of the famous -French
general, D’Esquerdes.® But against this powerful com-
bination stood Albrecht of the Bold Heart, backed by
those grim troops of Germany whose fame carried
fear into the hearts of men.

^ See Illustrative Notes, 30.

^ Philippe de Cr^vecceur, Seigneur d'Esquerdes, known to English
history and to Eyb as the Lord of Cordes, He had made himself
a sort of dictator in the north, ‘dominant et princiant en Picardic^-^
writes Molinet, ‘ comme ung petit roy,’

EXPLOITS IN THE NETHERLANDS 177

The chronicle now, therefore, develops into an
intricate tapestry of blood and battle, wherein its lord
and hero makes transient but admirably effective
appearances : storming positions at a run, and taking
city walls at a leap ; outwitting strength by stratagem ;
and often going near to lose his life, fighting on foot
against terrible odds. See him, for instance, at Lofen,
a stronghold of Philip of Cleves, bent on possessing
himself of the enemy’s harvest, and taken unawares by
fifty French cuirassiers who had been hiding behind a
church. Eyb becomes epic. ‘ The French captain, as
is their wont, let go his horses at the top of their pace :
towards him went Sir Wilwolt, comely accoutred.'
The Frenchman, whose spear far outmeasured our
hero’s, struck so mightily that his opponent’s horse
staggered, and the weapon itself flew to shivers. But
Wilwolt sat unyielding as a rock. The combatants
were man to man, so there ensued a veritable tourna-
ment, ‘ and it was so hard a fight that not many such
have hitherto been heard of.’ In the end Schaumburg,
as the wisest of captains, withdrew from the press, and
captured victory by craft, for, observing how evenly
the two sides were matched, he shouted to his men to
attack their opponents’ horses only. The order was
obeyed with instant success. Down with the chargers
went the riders, helpless in their heavy armour,
and those few whose horses survived were soon in
flight^

See Wilwolt, again, headings brilliant if barren raid
against the little island of Cadsand. Shipping across
the arm of the sea with 1,300 men-at-arms, neatly
bestowed in six-and-twenty boats, he carried the place
by storm, taking prisoner all the inhabitants, and

^ This same strategem was used in 1503 at the famous ‘Combat
des Onze’ on the walls of Trani, when the Frenchmen were all
brought to the ground by the Spaniards, and would inevitably have
■^en defeated had not Bayard and D’Urfd, who were still mounted,
performed the extraordinary feat of snatching the lances from the
charging enemy and re-arming their dismounted and discomfited
men. (Cf. Chronique de Bayart.)

178 A MASTER OF WAR

seizing above two hundred ‘lovely young battle-
horses.’ But while the burning and plundering was
still at its height, Philip of Cleves despatched to the
rescue two great caravels laden with men and artillery,
and hereupon there was ‘a great alarum’ among
Wilwolt’s sailors, who with one accord took to flight.
This was intolerable to the captain’s knightly spirit,
but not being as yet well versed in the art of sea-war,
he condescended to ask the shipmen the reason of
their excessive fear. ‘ And these gave him to under-
stand that here was no fight possible, since the enemy’s
ships were so high and over-topping that, were they
to be won, they must be stormed with ladders and on
high, like a bridge on to a mountain. And for sure, so
soon as the enemy overtook them, they would all sink
to the bottom and be shivered to fragments ’ : as
indeed quickly happened to two of the little vessels,
which were so well ‘ driven to the bottom, that none
came ever up again.’ The Captain himself withdrew
with the same skill and speed with which he had
attacked.

Or see Wilwolt leading a forlorn hope (‘ lest per-
chance God may favour me ’) against Aarschot : hiding,
with a mere handful of men, in the wood hard by the
town ; planting the ladders in the dead of night ;
climbing suddenly; slaughtering every wretch who
sought to bar the way ; bursting open the houses and
rifling their conte;nts. The streets were swept from
end to end by a ‘ horribly hastening fire,’ and a mass
of ready money and silver plate was secured, where-
by Schaumburg himself reaped no inconsiderable
benefit.

Finally — ^for the tale of fury is too long-drawn and
dismal to rehearse in full — see Wilwolt accomplishing
with unfaltering energy the subjection of Holland,
where rebellion had found a congenial and convenient
home. It was the famous Bread and Cheese Act of
1492. The peasants, stirred to mischief by the
followers of Franz van Brederode, had been sack-

THE bread and cheese ACT 179

ing and pillaging the city of Haarlem. Punishment was
imperative, and Wilwolt was the chosen executioner.

The insurgents had taken for their ensign a loaf
of rye-bread and a lump of green cheese.^ So Duke
Albrecht gave the Captain a banner with a can of beer
and a loaf of bread painted on it, remarking with
something less than his customary urbanity : ‘ The
enemy suffer the pangs of thirst, and if you bring
them no liquor, their cheese and bread will make them
to die of it, and this we must not suffer. Go thither,
therefore, in God’s name, and give them of their own
blood to drink, that they may never thirst again.’
The task, however, was no easy one, for Wilwolt’s
troops were scanty, while against him was arrayed a
‘ mighty multitude.’

Schaumburg, therefore, resorted to strategy and
eloquence. So soon as the soldiers had landed, he
dismissed his transports and, retreat being thus cut off,
exhorted his men : ‘ Dear brothers and pious men-at-
arms, our Lord hath sent us into this country to
conquer it. We have before us a great though im-
skilled people, and many may feel terror at their great
multitude, and bethink them of the ships. But these
are now away, so we can but place our trust in God
and our weapons. Practise your manly virtue, for
here is no other choice but death or knightly victory.’
And the soldiers, having no other alternative,
strengthened their hearts.

The enemy proved to be in force in the little town
of Beverwijk, and Wilwolt, having reconnoitred as
best he might, set to business. His plan was simple.
Ordering his little band, he chose a narrow street,

^ ^ Kasenbroots-volck, that is to say, men of bread and cheese : as
if one would say, poore men that fought for meate to eate, who went
in great troupes before the towne of Harlem, where, by the helpe of
poore handy-crafts men, they entred and spoiled all the rich men,
beating and breaking downe doores, windowes, cofers and cubberts ;
tearing in pieces papers, bonds, and instruments, pulling of the seales,
and carrying away what was fittest for them, and doing other villanies,
which did nodiing avayle them, yet could not be appeased.^ (Grime-
ston.)

i8o A MASTER OF WAR

wherein no more than six could go abreast, and down
this he confidently marched. The Hollanders, thinking
to have their foe in a trap, forthwith took up a position
with their guns in a cross-street, disposed their men
in two companies, above and below the alley chosen
by Schaumburg, and, when the Germans reached this
point, fell upon them lustily with their pikes. The
first three ranks of the landsknechts, including three
officers, were promptly cut down, which caused the
remainder ‘ exceeding alarm.’ But the value of the
Captain’s tactics at once became manifest, for with
much urging he succeeded in inducing his rear ranks
to press forward, and these now came again to the
thrust. The' Hollanders, taken by surprise, and unpre-
pared for a second encounter, fled incontinently, and
more than two thousand were killed and taken prisoners.

Wilwolt and his men ilow hoped for a little rest
and leisurely plunder, but next morning, while they
were still asleep, the scouts came speeding in to
announce the approach of the enemy in full force.
The warnings were so urgent that the Captain ran
out, mother-naked, to see for himself, and found the
Hollanders not half a mile away. ‘ And there came a
right hot alarm among the soldiery, and he stayed not
but took his clothes on his arm, ran to the men,
formed hurriedly his order of battle, dressed himself
there in the midst of them.’

The enemy proved to be an immense host, more
than 8,000 strong, and counting many burgesses in
full cuirasses, who had assembled from the whole
country-side. Now Wilwolt himself should have had
fifteen hundred men, reckoned according to their wage ;
but, when allowance was made for the double-pay men,^

^ ‘Die topplsoldner.* It was common for men of noble birth to
choose, for double pay, to enlist among the landsknechts. They
were also known as ‘grossen hansen,’ or ‘edlen,’ marched in the
front ranks, and had casquets and hauberks, while the common
knechts had no defensive armour at all. (Zwiedinck-Siidenhor^t)
Their wage was 8 to lo florins a month to the 4 florins of the ordinary,
soldier. Ulrich von Hutten began his career in this manner.

THE BREAD AND CHEESE ACT i8i

the number stood at scarce thirteen hundred. There
was nothing for it but a bold front, so he marshalled
and harangued his little troop : ‘ ordered them accord-
ing to his pleasure, comforted them and spake to them
right manfully.’ This done, he and his nobles dis-
mounted from their horses, ‘kept on corselets and
collars, plucked off their hose,^ placed them before the
common soldiers in the first line, and stepped thus
joyfully, with hearts undaunted, toward their foes.
Now let every knightly man bethink him what a sight
was this : that one should fight with eight. Even the
conqueror of the beautiful Parstillen had done no
greater deed.’ There, indeed, were many Parcifals to
be seen, adds Eyb with enthusiasm, and, above all, was
the boldness of the Captain to be admired, even ‘like
unto that of Tchionachtulander, when, tired and
hungry, he and his men fought the mighty hordes of
the Moors of Patelamunt.’®

When abreast of the enemy the gallant band ‘ sprang
knightly at them, and stabbed them forthwith into
flight.’ More than four thousand were cut down and
captured, while the remainder took refuge in the town
of Alkmaar. On the following day the Imperialists
advanced towards Haarlem, and slew more of the
enemy, who had ventured out too far: which ‘made
such a terror in the land, that they prayed for grace
and mercy, and whensoever the Captain approached
they went forth to meet him with relics and proces-
sions.’ And in the meanwhile Wilwolt, who had
so successfully carried 6ut his commander's instruc-
tions, ‘ did as the wise and humble Job and ascribed
all the honour to the King’s name.’

^ ^Krepsriic (krebs or Kurysz — ^tborax; riick — ^bacliylate) goller
(koller or Panzerkoller— the gorget or collar of chain-mail) and
hosen.’ ‘ Au voyage d'Allemagne j’ay oui dire que tons capitaines et
soldats, quand ils vouloient aller k nn assaut, coupoient leurs chausses
k leurs genoux tout k Pinstant, parcequ^elles estoient toutes d*une
venue et attache's en haut, afin quails puissent mieux monter k
PassautP (Brantdme.)

* ‘ Der sueze (susse) Schionatulander ’ of Wolfiam von Eschenbach's
TUuril^ and of its later imitation JDterjihtgere Titurwl.

182

A MASTER OF WAR

But not all Wilwolt’s enterprises were as successful
as this one, and at another period of the war his
powers of leadership were put to a severe test. For
when Albrecht of Saxony departed to attend the Diet
at Nilremberg, Wilwolt was left in the responsible
position of Captain-General of the forces in the district
of Liege, where the tempest of rebellion, under the genial
auspices of Robert de la M arck,^ was raging at its hottest.

The test, however, was scarcely a fair one. The
Imperial troops had, indeed, been more fortunate under
their new leader than under Maximilian. Many of the
towns had returned to their lawful allegiance, and
Duke Albrecht had ‘ won a joyful heart.’ With a firm
hand he had suppressed a violent outbreak of the
Hoeks,* and done to death that adventurous young
captain of beggarmen, Jonker Franz van Brederode.
And with a yet firmer hand he had chased and harried
Philip of Cleves and his army of twelve thousand men.
Finally he had come to terms with the citizens of
Bruges, recovered the whole of Flanders, and ‘sent
the Frenchmen back to their France.’ Philip of Cleves,
driven from Bruges, had taken refuge in the seaport
town of Sluys, ‘ a fortress so mighty that therefrom
one could make war against all Christendom,’ and had
started upon a profitable career of piracy ; ‘ wrote him-
self the friend of God and the enemy of all the world.’

But the Duke’s departure from the Netherlands was
at once the signal not only for a new revolt of the
cities, but also for a mutiny in the Imperial army, and
Schaumburg was soon afloat on a sea of dangers and
difficulties. The Imperial troops were actually the
worst offenders, for the Saxon and Thuringian soldiers
objected to obey any but their own commanders, and
flouted their new Captain as *a Frank and an Out-
lander.’ Thus ever, moralises the chronicler, does
‘ the bitter gall of cursed envy assail the dearest, the

‘ ‘Her Ruebrecht von Arberg,’ Robert III. de la Marck, known as
‘le gprand sanglier des Ardennes,’ fether of Fleurange, ‘le jenne Ad-
vanturcux.’

> See Illustrative Notes, 3*;

RUIN IN FLANDERS 183

ablest and the best.’ Presently, too, a company of
Wilwolt’s men suffered a severe reverse near Li6ge :
‘ and albeit this was not the fault of Sir Wilwolt, yet
was it the worst defeat that he had suffered in all the
years of his captainship.’

A further difficulty lay in the fact that the war had
lasted so long and the land been so sorely ransacked
and burned that ‘ there was little more to be won on
either side.’ Dismantled cities and demolished home-
steads proved but sorry larders for the starving armies,
and the panic-stricken peasants, even if dragged from
their holes of hiding, had nor heart nor strength for
fruitful labour. The golden harvests of com had
turned to harvests of flame. The very finiit-trees
dropped shrivelled fruits. Throughout Flanders the
devastation was so complete that once fertile fields
were now thickets sheltering deer and wild swine,
while so many and so fierce were the roving wolves
that none dared seek the strayed remnants of what
once were flocks. The Imperial officers even were so
impoverished that they must needs leave horses and
harnesses, jewels and adornments, in the clutches of
the innkeepers, and the Bishop of Li^ge himself was
fain to pawn his velvet skull-cap to pay his reckoning.
As for the common people, ‘ they did live a verie poore
and languishing life.’ ^

Once more, however, the tide turned, and when
Duke Albrecht came back from his jouraeyings with
money enough to relieve the anxious minds of his
numerous creditors and an unfaltering confidence in
his Captain that declined to be shaken by the accusa-
tions of envious detractors, Wilwolt’s heart was again
gay and glad.

But battle and the windy plains of the Netherlands
were not Wilwolt’s only means to glory, and in the

‘ Giimeston.

.184 A MASTER OF WAR

year 1489 he was entrusted with an important mission
of diplomacy to ‘ the Royal Worthiness of England.’
No hint is given of the object of the embassy, but it
may be surmised that it had reference to the stormy
question of Anne of Brittany and the sudden change
in Maximilian’s French policy as shown by the treaty
of Frankfort.

Henry VII. had for some time been supporting the
King of the Romans in his struggle with the Flemish
rebels and their allies. The interests of England were
closely affected by the fortunes of the Netherlands,
and if Henry had neither a special love for the King
of the Romans nor the traditional English dislike to
the King of France, he at least shared with his
subjects a lively desire to preserve Calais and her
Marches from the incursions of predatory neighbours.
Should West Flanders fall into the hands of the
insurgents or of the French, the last outpost of
England would be ringed by hostile garrisons; and
this was a possibility that even the cautious and
peace-loving Tudor could not contemplate unmoved.

In accordance with these fears, Henry had therefore
lately despatched a force of 2,000 archers and 1,000
pikes under Lord Morley and Lord Daubeny,^ to the
relief of Dixmude, which was hotly besieged by some
6,000 rebels and French mercenaries. The attack had
been brilliant: the English soldiers, says Eyb, were
‘verily a warlike* people,’ and the relieved garrison
swore with enthusiasm to live and die with them.
Lord Morley — ‘ being on horsebacke in a rich coat ’ *— ■
was killed. But this tragic event only made the victory
the more triumphant, for when the Englishmen knew of
the death of their commander, every man instantly
slaughtered his prisoner, and thus the burghers were
not only defeated but almost ‘ cleaned away.’ Fifty
pieces of artillery and a world of spoil were taken:

^ Giles Lord Daubeny, Governor of Calais, whose fine alabaster
monument is in Westminster Abbey,

* ‘ Werlich,’ literally weaponly. * ‘ ? HalPs ChronicU.

ENGLISH INTERVENTION 185

‘ they that went forth in clothe, came home in sylke,
and they that went out on foote, came home on great
horsses, suche is the chaunce of victory.’ * Wilwolt’s
connection with the battle was a somewhat ignomini-
ous one. Being sent by the Duke to pay the German
auxiliaries — ‘ and he saw and beheld that three-and-
thirty hundred men were laid in two graves and
covered with but little earth ’ ® — the landsknechts, not
satisfied, took him prisoner and demanded a ransom
of 10,000 florins. And, although the whole district
was taxed to produce this sum, it cost himself in the
end nearly half the amount. Even when this was
paid, he came very near to falling into the hands of
another party of mercenaries, and only escaped by
taking refuge in the house of a certain ‘ Burkgravine
of Him.’ Compensations, however, were not lacking,
for here such ‘above measure good-breeding and
honour ’ was shown to him, as he had in all his days
never experienced at the hands of strangers, while
amongst the ladies was an exceedingly beautiful
woman, the daughter of a mighty English lord,
‘ and Wilwolt reflected that in all his days he
had never seen a tenderer, lovelier or more delicate
female.’

Following the relief of Dixmude had. come the
relief of Nieuport, which the great French General,
D’Esquerdes, was besieging in person. He had with
him, according to Eyb, some twelve thousand men, and
the town was in a state of abject fear. The citizens,
indeed, were so stricken with terror that they sought
only to hide in every possible shadow and shelter;
and it was left to the women to array themselves in
sallets and breastplates and appear upon the fortifica-
tions. At the most critical moment, when the French
were actually planting their banner on one of the
towers, there arrived from Calais a bark containing

* Hall. And see Illustrative Notes, 32-

* ‘Above 3,900, beside them that were drowned.’ (Kmgsford,
Cktvmeks of London^

i86 A MASTER OF WAR

8o English archers. The women, perceiving them,
* cried with lamentable and loud voices, Helpe
Englishmen, helpe Englishmen, shote Englishmen,
shote Englishmen,’^ and what with the courageous
hearts of the archers and the stout stomach and
diligence of the women — ‘ which as fast as the Eng-
lishmen strake downe the enemies, the women
were ready to cut their throats ’ — ^the banner of
the French was soon replaced by the pennon of
St. George.®

It was shortly after these triumphs of the English
arms that Maximilian, with a complete disregard of
English interests, signed at Frankfort a treaty of
peace with Charles VIII. (July 1489), and that Wil-
wolt, presumably in connection with this, was sent
to England. He was accompanied by the knight
Friedrich von Witzleben, and equipped ‘ with great
splendour, as beseems the messenger of a king:
with raiment, noble trabants,® pipers, drummers
and other attendants, all of one colour, in notable
number.’

No sooner had the ambassadors committed their
uneasy persons to the treacherous mercies of the
Channel, than there arose so great a storm of wind
that it beat them over the open sea towards Scotland.
Their shipman, however, worked so industriously
that he brought them to anchor in the haven of
Winchelsea, where they lay a while at anchor. As
the gale did not abate, they were at last forced to land,
and, failing other methods of transport, to procure
peasants to carry their baggage for them ‘over the
mountains and through the wilderness, and, with
enough over, that should any give up through weari-
ness another should be there to carry in his stead.’

1 Hall.

* ‘ The covetous Lord Cordes (which so sore longed for Caleys,
that he would commonly saye that he would gladly lye vii. yeeres in
hell, so that Caleys were in the possession of the Frenchmen) brake
up his siege and shamefully returned to Hesdyng.’ (Hall.)

* ‘ Edlen trabanden ' : see sup'a^ p. i8o

AN EMBASSY TO ENGLAND 187

They struggled thus on foot for three days, till they
came to a road that led to ‘ Lunders,’ where they found
English hackney horses ^ to be hired for money. ‘ And
these each who commands them may ride as hard as
he will, for even should they die, the hiring money is
their payment ;* and so soon as one cometh to an inn,
it behoves not to inquire any more after them, for to
that end are English boys appointed, who wait upon
them, or let them run loose; for each knows well
how to find his way back.’ And so the travellers
arrived in London.

Having alighted at an inn rich with valuable tapes-
tries and ‘ every kind of adornment,' the two soldiers
had themselves at once announced as ambassadors
from Roman Imperial Majesty and Duke Philip of
Burgundy to the Royal Worthiness of England: ‘who
sent on the instant an honourably bom friend, with
sundry earls, barons and nobles, and these received
the worthy embassy nobly and honourably, praying
them to suffer their assistance graciously and magnani-
mously, for that they should shortly be received in
audience.’ The usual gift of wine was also brought to
them in great golden flagons, and their kitchenmaster,
purveyors and all necessaries were provided. They
remained in London for three days, during which time
they visited (with, it would appear, some contempt)
the royal artillery and ordinance: ‘many great cannon,
quartans and culverins, which shoot forth balls of iron,
with many other culverins and stone cannon, the like

' * Except the hackney horses between Gravesend and Dover, there
is no such usual conveyance in post for men in this realm as is in
the accustomed places of France and other parts.* {Letiers and
Papers^ Henry VIII, ^ vol. i.)

* * Moreover, one shall leame not to ride so furiously as they do
ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it
(required) ; for the Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is
an open sepulcher. And the English generally are observed by all
odier Nations, to ride commonly with that speed, as if they rid for a
Midwife, or a Physitian, or to get a pardon to save one’s life as he
goeth to execution, when there is no such thing, or any other occa-
sion at all, which makes them call England the Hell of Horses (not
without cause).* (Howell, Forreine Tra2/eII)

i88 A MASTER OF WAR

of which are no longer much seen elsewhere.’ ‘ They
were also taken about to see the sights of the city, and,
like the Bohemians of Rozmital, marvelled greatly at
their splendour and opulence. In the street of the
goldsmiths* they beheld wonders of precious gold
work, and so much silver plate ‘that they thought
that in all their days amongst all the princes of
Germany they had never seen so much.’ On old
London Bridge — ‘a bridge whereunder a great river
flowed’ — they found more than twice a hundred
thousand florins’ worth of merchandise ; while in the
churches and cloisters they were shown such treasure
of jewels and such marvels of architecture that they
had never in any other kingdom beheld the like.

‘ And that I may give an example from this country of
the size of London : it was in its breadth as Bamberg,
and as long as from there to Hallstadt.’

When the diplomatic monarch was ready to grant
an audience — and none knew better than Henry VII.
how both to cherish and to cheat the ambassadors of
a friendly nation — he sent two great nobles to fetch
them to him at Westminster.* They went by the
river, in a boat lined with cloth of gold and furnished
with covers, cushions and hassocks of velvet, and
were greeted on their arrival by two bishops, who led
them to the King’s apartments. The Archbishop of
‘ Candlwerg ’ * and a Cardinal brought them into the
royal chamber, which was all hung with cloth of gold,
and here they found Henry himself, seated in his

‘ ‘ Haubtgeschossen, cartanen, notschlangen, steinbuchsen.’ ‘ The
diligent watch that is now kept over the Tower of London, was never
so &fore the reign of Henry the Seventh, who keeps there a great
store of heavy artillery and hand-guns, bombards, arquebuses, and
battle-axes ; but not in that quantity that I should have supposed.*
A Relation of England^

® See Illustrative Notes, 33. ^ ® Ibid.^ 34.

^ This was that ‘Lorde John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbu^
and Chauncelier of Englande,* to whom Henry VII. sent for ‘Counseill
and Advis * whenever a foreign envoy arrived. (Cf. Leland’s Collec-
tanea, iv.) There are many ‘ greate Ambassades * from the King of
the Romans recorded about this time, though Schaumburg is
mentioned by name.

KENTISH LONGTAILS 189

majesty under a fine canopy, apparelled in ‘ costly
kingly clothes,’ having on his neck a chain of splendid
stones that gave forth a noble and goodly shining, and
on his head a bonnet gay with 'trimming and ornament.
After the audience, of which we learn nothing, save
that it was conducted with great seemliness, Henry
dismissed the embassy to the ladies’ apartments, where
sat Queen Elizabeth of York and her women in rich
array. The Queen herself spoke to them graciously,
and they were ‘ lovingly greeted,’ presumably with the
famous English kiss, by all the ladies ; a dance being
also accomplished in their honour, that they might see
the customs of the country. Indeed, so much attention
was paid to them, ‘ that themselves could not have
told what further honour, that was omitted, could
have been shown.’

On the departure of the ambassadors from London,
they were accompanied by another great ‘ land-lord ’
to Canterbury, where they duly wondered at the
shrine of St. Thomas with its wealth of gold and
precious stones, and at the treasury of the Cathedral,
so rich in objects of gold, that ‘these were little
thought of and put to daily use.’ They also heard
with awe of the Saint’s holy life, and of its terrible
consequences to the reckless inhabitants of Canterbury.
For of it ‘a notable sign is left, the which shall
perhaps endure even to the Last Day.’ Once on
a time, so runs the edifying tale, Thomas rode as
an upright pious man on his little ass into the town
to eat; but the peasants mocked at his mount, and
cut the tail from off his ass. ‘And thereat the dear
holy one complained him, whence at the present day
all the boys that are born in the town bring into
the world with them little tails, which they call
“ zegelein,” on their hinder parts at the roots. Whence
springs the proverb, which highly incenses them :
Englishman, hither with thy rump. And I would
fain behold that merry man who in this same city
would cry aloud English Tail, for he must swiftly

t 96 A MASTER OF WAR

retire, if he desireth not to be slain. And what woman
soever who, at the time of her delivery, cometh no
nearer than over the river into the other hamlet, yet
is her child born with a tail.’ ^

‘ So when,’ continues the chronicler, with a pleasant
inconsequence, ‘the embassy crossed from Dover to
Calais, there came three French robberships,® which
himted and pressed them hard, but the shipman did
well by them, brought them in a boat to land hard by
Calais, where the enemy and the great ships could
not follow. Wherefore they gave the shipman an
honourable guerdon. But what happened to him
thereafter I commend to God, for he flew his ship
quickly out to sea again.’

The immediate result of Wilwolt’s diplomacy does
not appear, but the peace between France and Ger-
many was of a brittle character, and it was not long
before England was again in alliance with the King
of the Romans and assisting his Lieutenant, Albrecht
of Saxony, to pull his perennially fizzling Flemish
chestnuts out of the fire. Sluys was the scene of this
second incursion of Henry VII. into the affairs of the
Netherlands. For in this ‘all-strongest townlet’*
Philip of Cleves was still defying Europe, ‘waging
sea-war on all the kingdoms, countries, and traffickers
of merchandise ’ ; and the Duke of Saxony, tired pf
the rebel commander’s piracies, was resolved to put
an end to them.

The investment of the town began in the month
of May, 1492, and Schaumburg took a leading part in
the preparations, his being the onerous duties both
of equipping and of commanding the many caravels,
hulks and great ships that composed Duke Albrecht’s

^ See Illustrative Notes, 35.

® The Channel was infested at this time by French pirates, and the
Paston Letters constantly tell of ‘Frenchmen whyrlyng on the coasts
so that there dare no fishers go out J The English, however, were
by no means behindhand in the art of piracy, the seamen of Calais
being known as ‘ Likedelers, dealing alike evilly with the ships of all
nations,*

* See Illustrative Notes, 36.

THE SIEGE OF SLUYS

191

fleet. Now to reach Sluys, it was necessary to pass
through the Schwarzgart, a narrow passage of rocks :
‘ and if any shipman knoweth this not right well, his
folk on the ship may sooner sail through the whirl-
pool of the Tannau for thence may no man win forth
by swimming.’ Moreover, this convenient point of
vantage was guarded by Cleves with all his vessels
of war and artillery. None the less the Captain, in
no way abashed, ‘ordered his biggest ship with his
best cannon to the front in the intent to drive forth
that Ravensteiner, and urged ahead straight in his
teeth.’ When Philip of Cleves saw the great war-
ship bearing down upon him, he fled in alarm back
to Sluys, and Wilwolt, having effected his passage
‘ without any smallest mistake,’ jubilantly re-possessed
himself of the little island of Cadsand, which he had
once been compelled to abandon so hurriedly.

Cadsand, however, lay only a culverin shot from
Sluys, and Cleves, with 2,000 men and his strongest
artillery, at once took up a position opposite the German
camp. And now Wilwolt and his officers disagreed,
the latter, with one accord, maintaining that to send
an expedition across the water to attack Philip would
be altogether too perilous a business, while the
Captain averred that their adversary, ‘ when knightly
encountered,’ was prone to flight,^ and that, moreover,
if they remained supine and suffered their ships to be
sunk, they would be left defenceless in a small and
unfortified place. Finally, Wilwolt took the matter
into his own hands : ‘ ran to his nobles and common
soldiers, formed them into order, cried to them that
they should hasten to the ships, seized a pennon from
a pennon-bearer, ran with it here and about, caused
the drummers to beat the alarum, went to meet the
captains of the footmen, cried to the soldiers to stand
back (for the said captains knew of those counsels of
difficulty, and he feared they might cause his men to

* Molinet gives a very different account of the courage rf Philip of
Cleves.

192 A MASTER OF WAR

waver), fell on to his feet from off his horse, spake
to them from his heart, calling upon them by their
honour and oaths to follow him.’

The soldiers responded manfully to the appeal, and,
taking ship, they sallied out to attack. Nor was it
long before Philip of Cleves fulfilled Wilwolt’s san-
guine prediction, and practised his ancient ways by
limbering up his cannon and retiring hurriedly into
Sluys. ‘ And hereupon the Captain thrust to land and
chased comfortably after them, some fleeing and some
being run through.’

Duke Albrecht now arrived upon the scene with all
his troops to assist in the siege, and the whole army
encamped before the town in four places. Finding
that the fortifications of this new Troy* presented
many vulnerable points, they set themselves industri-
ously to make gabions and shelters for the master-
gunners, and from behind these furiously battered
the two citadels. Soon, to their great satisfaction,
they shot a hole in the wall of the smaller castle. But
the hole was not very big, and the main result of the
achievement was that ‘through it the Sluysers ran
commonly all day long, making many skirmishes ’ and
keeping them constantly occupied.

Suddenly a rumour arose that a French fleet of
surpassing size and strength was approaching to
relieve the town. So the Captain, in a row-barge*
(‘ sometimes called running boat or guard boat ’), went
forth to reconnoitre. When he reached the open sea
he saw about eighty great-ships, each having five
great topsails and foresails, as well as many caravels,
hulks and other large vessels. They were all advancing
in order, and the wind stood right into their sails and
so puffed them out ‘ that to see them thus like mighty
castles passing by was beautiful.’ Wilwolt returned

‘ ‘ Comme jadis les Gr^geois se mirent sus k grande puissance
pour avironner la noble citd^de Troye, gendarmerie se adoublm &
tous costas pour subjuguer I’Ecluse.’ (Molinet.)

‘Ring parsen’ : probably the ‘basteaulx appellez royebargenl men-
tioned by Maximilian in a letter to the Regent Margaret. (Le Glay.)

THE SIEGE OF SLUYS 193

in haste and anxiety, and every one prepared to fight.
The Duke, however, sent the row-barges out once
more, with orders to erect, ‘according to the custom
of seafare,’ a hat upon a pole, as a signal that the
vessels should give an account of themselves.^ And
the stranger ships then explained that they were
English, and that their King had sent his best Captain,
with four thousand men and notable guns, to the help
of Roman Imperial Majesty.

Here, in fact, was the English fleet, or a consider-
able portion of it, ‘ wel furnished with bolde souldiours
and strong artillary,’® under the command of that
valiant knight and hardy warrior. Sir Edward Poynings.
For Duke Albrecht had written privately to the
English King, and Henry VII., who realised that Sluys
had become a very den of thieves to all traffic and
commerce, had instantly dispatched a large force to
his assistance. ‘ And when the news of this help came
to the dear prince, who more joyful than he and all his
men ? ’ The visitors were received with all possible
honour, the Germans even turning out of their own
camp for the better accommodation of the English-
men.

The task was now divided between the two forces.
The Duke of Saxony besieged the great castle, living
in a church over against it, while the Englishmen
assaulted the lesser castle, issuing from out of their
ships daily at the ebb of the tide : whereby the
enemy was allowed no moment ‘ to repose or playe.’ ®
The artillery of the English was ‘beyond measure
good,’ but they had no one with them who knew how
to set a gabion or make a gun-shelter. So Sir Edward
Poynings requested Schaumburg to perform these
offices for him, ‘ which he willingly did, and received
high thanks therefor.’

The circumstances of the siege seem, indeed, to

^ ‘ Holding up their Hats upon Poles that they would have us put
in.' (Erasmus, Colloquy of The Shipwreck,)

* Hall's Chrmicle, ® Ibid,

A MASTER OF WAR

194

have been peculiarly unpleasant, and many strange
and ingenious appliances were needful. Thus, when
the sea rose, the Duke’s artillery lay so deep in water
that it was hidden from sight, and the master-gunners
themselves ‘had no dry lodging, but hung on the
great gabions which they had set up, like swallows on
a wall.’ ^ The enemy had also acquired the unpleasant
habit of sending their marksmen in boats,® to stalk
these pendant warriors. The Germans did their
utmost to improve matters by raising their great
cannon on dams; and when the tide went out they
dried them and shot till it came in again. But they
were at a grievous disadvantage. Moreover, whenever
a spring-tide chanced, which was at the least once in
a month, the whole army stood, even in their tents,
up to the knees in water;® while, worst of all, the
cooking became ‘ very adventurous,’ and great care
had to be taken ‘ lest the cooking-pots should drown.’
It is little wonder, then, that the number of sick was
unprecedented and included Wilwolt himself ; indeed,
in all the camp there was only one sound man, ‘ who
was a tailor, and had much ado to wait upon them all.’

But, even in the course of this wearisome business,
Schaumburg managed to procure for himself an
interval of diversion. For Ghent — that fickle and
rebellious town,^ ‘ which amongst all merchant cities is
held the almightiest after Venice’ — had fallen away
from her allegiance, and it was once more necessary
to reduce her to a condition of ‘ sorrow, terror and
need.’ Wilwolt, therefore, quartered himself cheer-

^ This simile is probably taken from the iron cradles or ‘ swallow’s
nests,’ which formed part of the defences of a castle in the Middk
Ages. Cf. Sir Walter Scott’s descnption of Plessis in Quenfyi
Durward

* ‘ Called botackm or zullen, after the fashion of the country.’

® Hall describes the English also as being ‘ in water to the knees.’

■* ‘ I cannot imagine for what cause God hath so long preserved this
towne of Gaunt, the fountaine of so many mischiefes, and of so small
importance for the benefit of the countrey where it is situate. _. . .
But It seemeth that God hath created nothing in this world, neither
man nor beast, without an enimie to hold it infeare andhumilitie; and
for that purpose serveth this town of Gaunte very well.’ (Commynes.)

AN INTERVAL OF DIVERSION 195

fully in a cloister near by, where he remained, hinder-
ing the entrance of all provisions, and slaying such
unfortunates as he could catch. So bravely did he
lord it that the citizens could get no food or drink of
any kind. Whensoever they ventured forth they were
speared and slain, and so driven about, ‘ that for
tiredness and hunger they could scarce lay them
down.’ In all the mighty city there was no longer
more than one wine-shop. And even had there been,
the burghers were now too poor to purchase wine,
‘and must, with their comely wives, make shift with
filth.’ So it was not long before the burgomaster and
councillors rose in a body, barehead and barefoot,
in long, black, ungirdled robes, Tvith little white staves
in their hands, and fell on their knees before Duke
Albrecht, offering their keys and prajing for mercy.
Wilwolt, overjoyed at his success,^ at once prepared a
banquet in the town and invited a host of great lords
and notabilities, amongst whom were Sir Edward
Poynings and his chief officers, the Prince de Chimay
and Count Engelbert of Nassau. ‘ And he gave them
of fish and of venison, and for drink hippocras,
malvoisie, parsehart and others,® of the costliest and
best that he could procure in all the land. Further-
more he fetched from Bruges the all-loveliest dames
that were there and therewith the best musicians, and
they danced and were merry, and at night he presented
each lord with a lovely lady with whom to sleep on

^ The end was hastened by treachery within the gates, and the
betrayal of the valiant brothers Coppenolle. The treatment accorded
to the rebellious burghers meets with Eyb’s fullest approbation, and
his aristocratic soul yearns to inflict a like chastisement on his nearer
neighbours o Nuremberg. ‘ Wherefore, take example, ye just princes,’
he exclaims. Keep the haughty peasants under your rods, that it
may happen to them as to the men of Ghent, who had to submit to
this aforesaid conquering.’

* Hypocras was a p^ent or liqueur. * It is a usual drink to partake
of soberly in the morning,’ writes the apothecary, Gualther Ryff (1540,
in Scheible’s Kloster^ bd. vi.). Malvoisie or malmsey w^ a Greek
wine from Monemvasia in the Peloponnesus. ‘ Parsehart’ is mysteri-
ous^ but possibly stands for bastard, a favourite Spanish wine of the
day. (Cf. Measure for Measure^ III. iL)

196 A MASTER OF WAR

trust, according to the custom of the country. And in
the morning were they all affably returned to him
with exceeding high thanks ; and he rewarded each
one according to her station, and sent her honourably
home.’ ^

Beside this consoling interlude, various lesser but
lusty sports enlivened the days of Wilwolt. To him,
as Chief Captain, for instance, fell the important duty
of superintending the single combats which, in the
fine ancient manner, took place at intervals between
champions of either side. Sometimes, indeed, these
encounters were more savage than chivalrous, as
notably on one occasion, when a Swiss man-at-arms
came out from the besieged fortress to fight with a
landsknecht of the assailants. The encounter between
the combatants opened gallantly enough. Hose and
shirt were their only wear, and pike and dagger their
only weapons ; and thus ‘ they sprang with few words
on one another.’ At first the landsknecht seemed to
have the best of the business, since he quickly spitted
the Switzer with his huge pike, and, thrusting him
back into a little ditch, inflicted terrible wounds
with his dagger. But the Sluys champion laughed
last. For, finding himself in so desperate a strait, he
plucked in fury a bread-knife from the sheath of his
dagger and severed his enemy’s throat. The lands-
knecht was left for dead on the field, while the Switzer,
his treachery notwithstanding, was decently draped
in a cloak and carried by the marshals back to his
fortress, where ‘ so much advice was given to him that
he remained in life.’

At last, after sixteen weeks, Philip of Cleves made
overtures of peace, partly ‘for boredom at the death
and pestilence,' and partly because his father died
and he was desirous of seeing to the succession. At
once the sodden camp was made gay with magnificent
pavilions. Duke Albrecht stood to receive the van-
quished in a costly coat of gold, while Philip and the'
^ See Illustrative Notes, 37.

THE SUBMISSION OF SLUYS

burgesses of the city appeared in the same gloomj’^
garments of submission that had swathed the penitents
of Ghent. Kneeling before the prince, they proffered
allegiance and prayed, in a lengthy speech, for clem-
ency.^ Then the keys of the town and castles were
given to Schaumburg, who, taking with him the
English Captain, entered the smaller fortress, reared
up the banners of the Hapsburger and the Tudor side
by side, let blow all the trumpets for joy, ‘ and caused
all the other minstrels to perform their courtly usages.’

Of the English contingent Eyb speaks with appre-
ciation. ‘ It is found in old chronicles and histories,
that the English are a very warlike and combative
people. And this they showed themselves here : gave
the German soldiery little advantage, stood up well
to the enemy in skirmishes and engagements, bore
themselves right laudably.’ *

They also, it must be added, skirmished well and
frequently with their own allies ; and no sooner had
the moment come for each army to go its way than a
lively tumult took place between the German and
English soldiery, ‘whereby many remained dead.’
Indeed, the Duke and his captains had the greatest
difficulty in separating them. At length, however,
the Englishmen were duly collected and conveyed to
their ships, and they arranged themselves carefully
and comfortably in the same order in which they had
come, ‘ all tidy and joyful to behold.’ ‘ And thereupon
they caused all their trumpets to blow, and loosed off
all their big guns, quartans, culverins and other pieces,
whereof they had many and plenty, and thus in God’s
name they went their way.’

^ The terms accorded to the ‘ rebel ^ show, however, the esteem in
which he was held even by his adversaries, since he was p>ermitted to
hold the great castle until such time as Maximilian should pay a long-
standing debt of forty thousand florins, and was also granted a yearly
pension and the enjoyment of his estates. According to Molinet, the
garrison would have held out indefinitely and the Germans been
forced to retire had not an accident ignited the whole of their gun-
powder.

* §ee Illustrative Notes, 38,

198, A MASTER OF WAR

The Duke himself turned, with the flower of his
army, to Bruges, leaving the common foot-soldiers at
Damme, with certain barrels of money wherewith they
were to be paid when their wages were due. The
soldiers, however — never peaceful save when in
action — rose in a body, seized the fortress and the
money, and comported themselves altogether evilly.
The Duke was at his wits’ end, as they had made
themselves masters even of the keep. But the Cap-
tain, having discovered that their officers and grosten
Hansen were in the habit of repairing to Bruges ‘ to
the baths and to make good cheer and to see the
comely damsels,’ took the provost and a sufficient
number of men and, coming upon them in a help-
less condition, seized them all. ‘And, on pain of
losing their heads, must they give every penny back
again.’

And on this very human note ends what proved to
be the culminating scene in the grim and stormy epic
of the Flemish Civil War.

This was not, however, the end of Wilwolt’s dealings
with England, for another large adventure, wherein
King Henry VII. played a characteristic but no very
glorious part, fell instantly to his lot.

During all this period the western Courts of Europe
had been harassed and harrowed by the spousal
sorrows of Anne of Brittany. The dying fief of France
had assumed an almost melodramatic prominence in
the politics of Western Europe, and Anne, a small,
plain, uninteresting child, was the uncomely Helen of
the melodrama.

Elder daughter and heiress of Francis, the last Duke,
Anne was, so to speak, the ‘ perfect plum ’ of Europe’s
marriage garden, and, even before her father’s death,
fhf ipark of several eager suitors apd the eau§e of

ANNE OF BRITTANY

an intermittent war conducted by France against the
Duchy and its two supporters, Germany and England.
After her succession (in 1488) Anne betrothed herself,
against the will of France but with the assent of
England, to the widowed Maximilian, who, to ensure
the fulfilment of her promises, insisted on a form of
affiance that startled even the hardened historians of
the period. But even this was of small avail, for no
sooner had the ‘fonde new-founde ceremony’^ been
accomplished and his happiness apparently assured,
than the intending bridegroom, unstable as ever,
relinquished all further effort and transferred his
attention to his wars. It was his characteristic, de-
clares Bacon, ‘ to leave things when they were almost
come to perfection, and to end them by imagination ’ ;
and, like a bad archer, he had again not drawn his
arrow up to the head. In this case the omission was
fatal, as it left the field clear for that enterprising Paris,
Charles VIII., who at once entered Brittany, suborned
the garrison at Rennes, and, in December 1491, trium-
phantly eloped with the so-called Queen of the
Romans. Since, by this proceeding, Charles also
repudiated the claims of the little Margaret of Austria,
who had been educated at the French Court as his
future bride, he administered to the unhappy Maxi-
milian a double-edged and doubly-pointed thrust.
Quick for vengeance, the King of the Romans applied
for help to every quarter of the horizon : to the Kings
of England and of Aragon, to the Swiss cantons and
to the Diet of the German Estates. But if Maximilian
was as sore as the proverbial bear, he was also as poor
as the proverbial badger, and the only power which
responded to his appeal was the astute and resourceful
Henry VII., who was urged to action by the unflag-
gingly warlike and anti-French proclivities of his
subjects.

This monarch now sailed over the Channel to the

* Hall’s Chronicle ; but, according to some chroniclers, the cere-
mony was the same as that usually performed at betrothals.

A MASTER OF WAR

198

i^oud music of minstrels and the quips of a Spanish
jester, and appeared upon the coast of France. * The
King of England,’ writes Eyb, ‘ having levied an over-
great tax and duty on his people, as it is said over
eighteen times a hundred thousand florins, and seeing
that there is an eternal, everlasting war between the
two kingdoms, covenanted with his countrymen to
cross over to the King of France, and commanded
above four hundred great and middle-sized ships, the
best that he had or could fetch from his kingdom,
Holland and Zealand,^ the which were all brought in
his pay to England. He furnished the same with folk,
provisions, artillery and all that pertaineth to a camp,
and shipped thus with two-and-twenty thousand men
or more to Calais.’ This done, he sent an ambassador
to the Duke of Saxony, demanding assistance as
a return for the notable help which he had given at
Sluys and elsewhere. Duke Albrecht, ‘ high-spirited
and knightly,’ forthwith despatched to Calais four
thousand men-at-arms under his favourite captain,
Wilwolt, promising to follow in person before
long.

Schaumburg, however, never arrived in Calais, for
while still two days’ journey from his destination he
was secretly approached by an adventurer named
Grison,* who offered to assist him to recapture for his
master the town and citadel of Arras, now occupied
by the French.® And here ensues a narrative, from the
German standpoint, of the celebrated recovery of this
city of looms, Eyb’s hero being, as it appears, the
leader of those ‘ bands of Maximilian ’ * whose triumph
was so sure and speedy.

Wilwolt was greatly tempted by the suggestion of

* These included Sir Edward Poynings and his fleet from Sluys.

’ Grisart in Molmet. This chronicler’s account of the assault
differs considerably from that of Eyb.

’ Louis XL had annexed Arras in 1477, expelling the entire popula-
tion and rechristening the town ‘ Franchise.’ The great industry that
had been its glory was never re-established,

* Commynes,

201

THE TAKING OF ARRAS

Grison, and since a certain honest nobleman out of
High Burgundy, named Loi de Wadre (Louis de
Vauldrey) not only answered for the man’s good
faith, but proposed to back up the offer with five
hundred horse, he finally yielded to it. Dividing his
army into two companies, he sent half to Henry
and advanced with the remainder to within a league
of Arras, where he was joined by Loi de Wadre.
Every man and woman whom they met on the way
was captured, so that no warning reached the doomed
city; but, with a humane intention that deserved a
better reward than it obtained, Wilwolt promised
each of his landsknechts three months’ pay should
they take possession of the place without pillage or
plunder.

When night fell the adventurous band stole closer
to their prey, and, after an anxious and hazardous wait
in a deep entrenchment, where they were disturbed
and forced into an alarmingly noisy skirmish by some
French booty-riders, heard sounding through the
darkness the welcome signal of a cat mewing upon
the wall. On this they made their way cautiously to
the town gate, but found it, to their horror, still shut.
This disappointment, added to the suspicious inatten-
tion with which the town guards had greeted the
sounds of their recent scuffle, caused Wilwolt to fear
an ambush. It was too late, however, to draw back,
and, without undue dismay, he invented a new
method of entry. Hastily making a scaffolding of
spears from the bridge over the ditch on to the wall,
he persuaded ‘ a soldier of half wits ’ to creep up the
unsteady ladder. As, on arriving at the top, the fool
was imnoticed and unchallenged, the Captain next
bribed one of the trabants to climb up also, to run to
a smithy * that lay near by, to seize a big hammer and

^ *The author of this treason was a poore smith that dwelled upon
the towne wall, and had been the onely man that was suffered to
remaine in the towne by Lewis the eleventh, when he transported the
^wnes men as a colonie into Fraunce.* (Commynes.)

202 A MASTER OF WAR

to destroy the bolt of the small door in the town
gate. Through this Wilwolt and his men-at-arms now
crawled one by one, and their spirits began to rise.
But barely twenty of them had passed when the street
in front suddenly filled with the cuirassiers and soldiers
of the French.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the Captain rallied
his men, gathered round him the soldiers with the
longest spears, ‘ and ran straight at the townsfolk,
crying to them gaily and gallantly; Hye, hye, ho!’
The Frenchmen, who were taken utterly by surprise,
and thought that the whole army of Burgundy was
without doubt upon them, were aghast, and fled into
the neighbouring church ; but the Captain followed
and took over 200 prisoners. Meanwhile, the great
door had been broken through, and the Burgundian
cavalry dashed in. With this reinforcement, the
matter was quickly settled. Wilwolt’s servants
brought him his horse, and on this he ‘ sat, running
from one troop to another, commanding what each
one should do or leave undone.’ The unfortunate
burgesses fled into their houses, hiding and fortifying
themselves as best they might, for the order had been
given that every Frenchman was to be slain. The
Captain, however, with his usual humanity, let it be
made known, that all such as were for Burgundy
might mark themselves with St. Andrew’s Cross and
shelter in the great Cathedral. ‘ And forthwith out
ran the burghers unarmed, from all the corners and
streets, shouting aloud “ for Burgundy ” ; one marked
himself with chalk, another with white cloth, as best
they might in such haste, and there were over two
thousand in the church.’

The town was now in Wilwolt’s possession, but
the two castles were still in the hands of the enemy,
while the French commander, D’Esquerdes, lay but a
few miles away above 10,000 strong. Moreover, the
only cannon available were two snatched from the
council hall, and at the first shot ope of these burst

THE TAKING OF ARRAS 203

and wrecked the other.^ Fortunately the small citadel
decided to surrender, and hereupon Wilwolt set to
and stormed the main fortress with such ‘ earnest and
ioyous determination ’ that the garrison ‘ became feeble
for fear,’ and, led by the Governor, Cerclemant, fled
incontinently by the hinder doors into the open
country. The landsknechts, following, ran down many,
including the Governor, who was too fat to run.®
And they brought him in, with his baggage, which
contained ‘ many golden chains and crosses, pater-
nosters and much preciousness.’

Schaumburg now made order in the two castles and
the town as best he could. Nor, in this moment of
elation, did the noble Wilwolt forget that generous
courtesy of which his chronicler makes so constant
a boast. For not only did he strive to prevent his
soldiery from sacking the city, but when the Governor’s
lady actually offered to him, as the favoured of the
Almighty, all her treasure — ‘ raiment and jewellery,
with gold pieces, chains, jewels, money, precious stones,
sables, martens and good fur-linings, rich cloth and
other costlinesses worth above four thousand florins ’ —
he waved it aside with the perfect grace of a Bayard
or a Sidney. Captains and soldiers growled and
threatened, declaring that a man should do according
to the custom of the country he was in. But Schaum-
burg remained firm, speaking many noble words of

^ There is a curious passage on the dangers constantly incurred by
artillerymen in a French work of the fifteenth century called Le Livre
du Secret de ^Art de FAriillerie et Canonnerie, The first and
chiefest * art of cannonry ^ is to fear God more than all other men of
war soever^ For, if one fires any piece of artillery and makes use of
gunpowder, the great strength and force of this constantly causes the
cannon to burst ; and, if the cannon itself do not burst, there is ever
a risk of being burned by the powder. ‘ Of the which powder the
vapour alone is really venomous against man ; and it is to him an
enemy more grievous and terrible than all others, through its desire
to kill and destroy him by means of the great ills, mischiefe and
damages that it does to him in its said vocation and trade/ (Cf,
BoutelPs A rms and A rmour ^ )

* ‘ Carquelevant the Governor, when the towne was surprised, lay
fast a sleepe, drowned in drink and good cheer, as it is said/
(Commynes.)

204 A MASTER OF WAR

knightly honour, and of the difference between the
French and the Germans — especially those of the
High Country — in their treatment of women ; whereat
the ladies and ‘ even the Wahlen were greatly moved.
‘ For one may not often meet with such things among
customs of war in the Netherlands,’ comments the
historian.

The news of the capture of Arras was a great blow
to the French General, who, when he heard the terrible
tidings, ‘trembled beyond measure greatly, snatched
his headdress from his head, threw it on the fire, tore
his hair and beard, wept bitterly.’ Rising up eight
thousand strong, he camped before the walls of Arras,
but it was all in vain, and he soon withdrew, with no
gain save mockery.

Open methods having failed, he resolved to recapture
the town by stratagem, and a fine opportunity soon
seemed to present itself. For a certain serf of Loi de
Wadre had come to his master and offered, on con-
dition of freedom from bondage, to go with two soldiers
to a neighbouring Burgundian magnate, and to bring
both himself and his great possessions to the new
garrison’s support. The proposal had been accepted,
and the three men had set forth; but instantly — ^whether
of design or by mischance is not quite clear — they
had fallen into the clutches of D’Esquerdes. Here
were the tools ready to the Frenchman’s hand, and he
used them. Confronted by the alternative of the
speedy hangman or a reward of four thousand florins
apiece, one of the soldiers chose honourable death ; but
the serf and his second comrade not only gave away

* The meaning of the word ‘walhen,’ ‘walhisch,’ ‘welhisch’_ or
‘ walsch ’ has been much discussed. The usual rendering is Italian,
but It has also been interpreted to mean North French and _tbe
langue d'oyl. When Maximilian, m a letter to his daughter, desires
her to see that the boy Charles writes some good letters in ‘walon’
to his grandfather of Aragon, he certainly means French. It seems
therefore probable that in this case the ‘ Wahlen ’ designate the de-
feated garrison of Arras. Yet, to complicate the matter still more,
‘ die welschgart ’ was one of the many names given to tlje ctpras^iers
in Maxunilian’s own troops.

THE KEEPING OF ARRAS 20S

their own project, but consented to fall in with the
ingenious plan that was now builded upon it. This
was no less than to keep the appointed tryst with their
master at the door of Arras citadel, having with them
as warrants for their honesty, instead of the expected
Burgundian treasure, the plate-chests and possessions
of D’Esquerdes ; and at their backs ready for the
opening gates, instead of the friendly magnate, the
whole of the enemy’s force.

The scheme promised well, and the French troops
crept eagerly towards their glorious revenge. But
their commander had reckoned without the prudence
of his adversaries or the cowardice of his own men.
When the advance-guard with the convoy of treasure
reached the citadel, the outer gate only was unbarred,
and four men were squeezed out to inspect the new
arrivals. And hereupon the unfaithful soldier, hastily
reverting to the path of loyalty, began crying
passionately and urgently, ‘ Take us prisoner, take us
prisoner.’ This, after a moment’s surprise and demur,
the four Germans did, the French guard without
hesitation running away. The convoy was then
quickly dragged within the walls, the gates shut, and
D’Esquerdes left to pursue his homeward path, a
sadder and wiser man, less silver vessels and em-
broidered wardrobe.

When the matter was sifted, Wilwolt ordered the
traitor serf to be ‘ quartered, according to his deserts,’
and the repentant accomplice to be rewarded with a
hundred florins' worth of the treasure. As for the
faithful soldier who had preferred death to disloyalty,
he was treated with the utmost honour ; a captured
nobleman of the French army was exchanged for him,
and he was given a competency for the remainder of
his life.

Meanwhile King Henry of England was no better
pleased than the French General at the turn which
matters had taken. As Bacon says, he preferred the
&me of a war to its achievement, and, when Wilwolt

2o6 a master of war

sent him news of his success believing that he would
be greatly rejoiced, ‘ the King was contrariwise above
measure sore troubled.’ Now this, according to Eyb,
was the cause of the English Worthiness’s terror, as
privily explained to the Captain. The King of England
had, as aforesaid, taken eighteen times a hundred
thousand florins from his people,^ promising them to
sally forth against the King of France, their hereditary
enemy. But the King of France it was who had
helped the King of England to his throne, with ‘ sin-
gular much money and other furtherings.’ Yet, again,

‘ he of England could by no means let this be known,
else would he soon be put out of the way by the lords
of the land and those near to the crown.’ He resolved
therefore to make a feint of fighting, and, in order
to show determination, attacked several little towns
lying round about Calais, won two of them, burst the
walls and burned the houses, and gave the King of
France, out of his store of money, a hundred thousand
florins to permit this to happen. ‘ Thereafter, he
proceeded to a town called Bullion, wherein our dear
Lady most graciously rests, camped there with his
artillery, worked very hard.’

But Boulogne had been provisioned for two years
and was defended by i,8oo men-at-arms, and although
the noise of the English shooting reached as far as to
Grammont in Flanders, its result was small. This
unexpected check, coupled with the nearness of the
winter season, and the difficulty of transporting food
and ammunition from England through ‘the great
rage and tempest of winds and weather,’ furnished
Henry with an excellent excuse for withdrawal from
an awkward position ; so (on November 3, 1492) he
meanly deserted his Imperial ally, and signed a peace
at Etaples. The soreness of the Germans, though
Henry was but apeing the tactics of Maximilian at
Frankfort, finds vent in some remarkable asseverations

* Henry demanded j^ioo,ooo, but obtained £27,000 only. {Pout.
Hist^ vol. v.)

HENRY VII.’S TRICK 207

on the part of Eyb. It was arranged, he declares,
‘ that the King of France should give him of England
ten tuns of golden crowns ^ for his expense and trouble
and labour out of England, the which barrels were
placed by one another in a great hall, being so con-
trived as to hold ten times a hundred thousand
golden crowns. When the English saw these, they
reckoned to have achieved a great matter; but the
barrels, with the knowledge of both Kings, were filled
with ashes, whereon were laid gilded copper crowns,
of the which fifty were scarce worth one golden one,
and whoso felt by chance in the barrels would remark
no otherwise than that they were filled with gold.’®
Henry was now therefore greatly alarmed lest Duke
Albrecht or his Captain should arrive ‘ and maybe tell
or give the English to understand with what knavery
their King was occupied ’ ; and he wrote with all
speed to inform them that all disputes had been
settled, thanking them politely for their past pains on
his behalf, but showing no desire for their society.

Be this as it may — and even in England ‘ they stuck
not to say’ that the King had plucked his people to
feather himself® — Wilwolt was in no position to in-
vestigate the matter. Indeed he had at that moment
scant leisure for any difficulties save his own, since
his closest enemy lay within his gates. Perhaps the
sternest problem that confronted the officer of the
fifteenth century was that of the payment of his troops,
cash being almost invariably lacking and plunder
precarious. The chief duty of a captain, wrote
Machiavelli, was to keep his soldiers punished and

1 The indemnity of 145,000 crowns, equal to about ;£4,ooo,ooo
sterling of our money, was to be paid in half-yearly instalments of
;^25,ooo. {PoUt. Hist., vol. V.)

* A like trick is attributed to Matthias Corvmus of Hungary, who
is accused by Bohemian histonans of paying a ransom to George of
Podebrad with a bushel of bran thinly covered by gold pieces. But
in this case it was the enemy only that was deceived. (Cf. Sayous.)

* Cf, HaU. * We accepted this peace, both in order to attend to
other matters and to avoid shedding Christian blood,’ wrote Henry
piously to Pope Alexander VI. {State Peters, Veitetian, voL i.)

2o8 a master of war

paid. And although the landsknechts were compelled
to swear unfaltering obedience to their leaders ‘whether
it rained or snowed or the sun shone by day or by
night,’ their fulfilment of this oath appears to have
depended wholly on the fatness of their master’s
purse. That Wilwolt suflfered sorely from the universal
disease of impecuniosity appears on almost every
page of his biography ; nor did his unusual leaning
towards honesty and humanity tend to smooth the
difficulties of his pauper path. ‘ So I must now,’
declares the chronicler ironically, ‘ expound the good
deeds of the honest landsknecht.’

Wilwolt, as already told, had promised to give each
man three months’ pay fourteen days after the taking
of the city— a promise that required for its fulfilment
the important sum of 60,000 florins. He laboured
hard, and, thanks partly to the welcome French
contribution, succeeded in collecting almost the whole
amount in a short time. But when the soldiers learned
that he had the money by him, ‘ they were minded to
strike him dead, to share the money and to plunder
the town, the which they had beforehand agreed not
to do.' They therefore marched all of them in full
order, armed with handguns, culverins and sakers
(zachenl) upon his lodging, and sent their officers^
to tell him that he must pay them instantly and
without delay, ‘ otherwise they would know how to
pay themselves.’ Wilwolt distributed the gold in his
possession so far as it would go, but found himself
about 12,000 florins short, and was forced to take the
silver vessels and cupboards of the Bishop of Arras
to pay the ‘ nobles ’ and the cavalry. And even so
the villains were not satisfied, but continued to riot
and ravage at large, no one in the whole country-side
being safe from their attacks.

^ ‘ Haubtleut, fendrich (fahnrich) und waibl (weibel) ’ : captains,
ensigns and sergeants. These, with the captain-in-chief and the
‘ proves/ seem to have constituted the tale of officers in Wilwolt’s
troops. (Cf. Fronsperger’s Kriegsrechte^ 1566, and Zwiedinch’^
Sudenkorst.)

THE HONEST LANDSKNECHTS 209

Moreover, at this precise juncture it befell that
Margaret, the small rejected bride of Charles VIII.,
was to pass through Arras on her return to her
Imperial father’s dominions. Knowing the disturbed
state of the district, her escort sent an embassy to
Schaumburg, to bid him turn out with his whole
garrison of horse and foot, ‘ to the end that she might
peacefully and unhindered pass thereby.’ The Captain,
in much perturbation, assembled his troops and laid the
matter before them. But objurgations and blandish-
ments were alike vain. They merely replied that
much was still due to them, that they were short of
money and ' that they prayed to be excused.’ Were
they paid, the behests of the ambassadors should be
fulfilled, but were they not paid, they would ‘seize,
take, capture and keep’ whomsoever they could, to
keep life in their bodies. Nor with the utmost trouble
and industry could the Captain procure or forward
any more satisfactory answer. A second deputation
was sent and the troops were again assembled.
Wilwolt now pointed out to them how shameful it
would be to lay sacrilegious hands on the daughter
of their own suzerain lord, and how that death would
thenceforward be their only wage throughout all the
Empire, ending with a moving allusion to his own
honourable ancestry and the jeopardy of his stainless
name. ‘ Dear friends, here is the truth : if we do this
we are for ever shamed ; whithersoever we go, unsure
of life and limb.’

None the less, ‘ stiff as a stone, here was no turning.’
And it was not till the Captain had bethought him of
pointing out to his ‘ dear friends and pious men-at-
arms ’ that the Archduke Philip rather than his sister
was their true creditor, that they decided to yield
obedience. This thought indeed pleased them. ‘ The
Duke Philip I ’ they cried ; ‘ what should others matter
to us? In his lands will we rob, burn, spoil and
ravage, even till we are paid.’

Hereupon the Lady Margaret was given her safe-

210

A MASTER OF WAR

conduct and passport with the Captain’s seal. And
she passed on her way, all joyous at her escape from
France : ‘ with great splendour, costliness and bravery,
in a horse-litter, seated on a noble throne erected
thereon. Over her was a roof fashioned of a golden
piece to shelter her from the sun : and thus she fared
through Brabant.’ She was everywhere received with
great honour, and many merry bonfires and noble
spectacles. And she perhaps never realised the
danger that she had so narrowly escaped.

When the passing of Margaret was accomplished, the
soldiery felt themselves at liberty to pay full attention
to the Archduke Philip and his liabilities. This
they accordingly did, ‘robbing, burning and lording
it throughout his lands, even as though he were the
enemy.’ And when the country round was squee2ed
quite dry, they behaved ‘evilly and horribly’ in the
town, torturing the rich citizens and holding them to
ransom. The Captain would gladly have punished
the mutineers, as he had done once before, when he
had ‘ run sundry through with the spear and cut off
the heads of others.’ ^ But the revolt was too general.
The soldiery ‘ held together after their old fashion,
that none might seem too pious or too honest’ And
instead of his punishing them, it was they who ordered
him to bestir himself and procure money for them, on
pain of instant death.

Wilwolt’s position now became, in fact, one of
extreme peril. On one occasion the mutineers felled
him to the ground, and had not the halberdiers
protected him, repelling the assailants with their

^ These were the two methods of execution in Maximilian^s army.
The culprit had either to suffer ‘ Das Recht der langen Spiesse ’ (the
law of the long pikes), running the gauntlet through a lane of his
comrades’ lowered weapons, or to have his body cut ‘ into two parts
m such wise that the head shall be the smaller and the body the
larger part.’ The first of the two punishments was considered
the least degrading, as it was possible to show courage and resolution
by dashing down the lane of death at utmost speed. (Cf, the wood-
cuts by Jost Amman in Fronsperger’s KriegsrechU^

THE HONEST LANDSENECHTS ail

pikes, he would assuredly have been killed.* As it
was, they took him prisoner, together with Loi de
Wadre and the other commanders, shut them all in
one room, and had them guarded with halberds night
and day, ‘ before, behind and at the sides, even as
though they had been thieves and murderers.’ More-
over the prisoners were constantly forced to write
letters asking for money, all the communications
being carefully investigated by the soldiers. As no
answer, however, came to these missives, the rebels
themselves soon began to correspond with the
authorities, offering the town ‘ to the Kings of France,
England and others, for the price of their wages ; and
they placed bundles of straw over the town gate as
a token of the sale, cried, according to their custom :
Who buys may have.’ *

Matters dragged on in this way for a year. Wilwolt’s
friends managed presently to escape, but the Captain
himself remained, ‘thinking to watch that the town
was not verily sold, for had that happened it had been
a great and etenial disgrace; what prince, king or
lord would ever again have put faith or trust in them ?
For never more had they been worthy of faith, honour
or confidence.’ His sole consolation lay in fostering
a lively disagreement between the divers parties in
the camp, with the result that no decision was ever
reached.

But at last even he could stand it no longer, and a
fresh and yet more insulting attempt upon his honesty
brought matters to a head. Among the soldiers were
five hundred Swiss (‘ evil rogues ’) commanded by a
captain named Kaneloser, who had formerly been in
the French service, and would have been delighted to

^ Compare Frundsberg's treatment at the hands of his beloved
‘children.’ Their mutinous assault upon him broke his heart and
ended his career.

* * Lat ir das stroh hangen ’ (‘ Let her hang out the straw’), writes
Albert Achilles of Brandenbui^ to his wife, when suggesting a
certain line of conduct as suitable to the needs of the Lady
Regina.

215 A MASTER OF WAk

hand over the city to Charles. This man came secretly
to Wilwolt and tried to persuade him to affix his seal
to a document which he had prepared, promising the
prisoner 4,000 crowns and all necessaries for the due
payment of the troops if the matter were brought to
a successful issue. ‘ O, think,’ exclaims the chronicler,

‘ think, each pious, true heart, how heavy this was for
that dear and faithful knight! ’ Utterly at the mercy
of his gaolers, the victim dared not answer ‘ from his
heart,’ and could but temporise by imploring the
Switzer to wait a little longer for an answer from
the lords of Brabant. The whole garrison promptly
guarded him with increased attention and industry,
lest he should escape as the other officers had done ;
‘ day and night they guarded his lodging 200 strong,
and watched the gates of the city without intermission.’
Feeling, however, that the position was no longer
tenable, he determined to evacuate it at the first
opportunity.

It so happened that the soldiers had captured ‘a
notable herd of cattle,’ and that they asked the
Captain — who still retained a measure of authority —
to apportion the beasts into equal lots. Wilwolt
assented graciously, discerning possibilities in the
situation, and ‘ sat him in a great velvet cloak, having
shoes on him, upon a mule.’ But near by stood a
tall and fleet jennet {jeniter) in the charge of his
boy, who had orders to draw as close as possible to
him, and, if any chance appeared, to fall off and help
him to mount the horse instead. The Captain next
rode up to the cows and caused them to be sorted
out, telling the soldiers that, so soon as they had
divided the booty with perfect equality, he would
distribute it : ‘ saw then his opportunity and stepped
aside, as though for a purpose.’ And now, in a
moment, off the jennet leaped the boy and on to
the jennet leaped the Captain.

Once his good horse under him, Wilwolt felt a
different man. Spurring with splendid insolence up

THE WIVES OF TOI 213

to his chief enemy, he advised him to find some other
tool for his evil projects ; then, turning his face to
freedom, galloped off.

Mighty was the hue and cry when the landsknechts
found that their victim was away, and over a hundred
horsemen thundered after him. But the Captain was
too quick for them, and arrived safely in the little
town of ‘ Buscha in Henigau, where many say that in
old times Sir Lancelot of the Lake resided,’

When Schaumburg reached the camp of Duke
Albrecht, he painted so lively a picture of the state of
Arras, and of the certain consequences of its sale to
the French King, that 40,000 florins were at once
raised for the payment of the troops. His own
troubles were, however, by no means over, for it now
behoved him to return and discharge the debts in
person.

Uncertain of his reception, he set forth for a town
named Toi (Douai ?), four miles distant from Arras,
procured a safe-conduct from the burgomaster, and
commanded the heads of each troop to come to him
for the money. But these still pursued a mutinous
course and refused to appear in their proper order.
For, when payment was so long delayed, the oflScers
could often obtain a booty of some thousand florins
by suppressing the death or disappearance of many of
their number : ‘ of whom they would make show,
even as though they were yet to hand.’

And worse was to come ; for, in addition to their
disobedience, the landsknechts plotted ‘a knavish
trick.’ Having carefully inquired for the wickedest
and worst-tempered women of Arras, they forthwith
seized these ladies’ husbands, and declined to set them
free save on one condition : that the wives should
betake them to Toi, should ask for Sir Wilwolt of
Schaumburg, should beseech him to help them in
freeing their spouses, and finally, wheresoever they
found him, even if sheltering in a church, should take
him prisoner and bring him to Arras. If that proved

214

A MASTER OF WAR

impossible, they were to stab him: for so and no
otherwise would their husbands be set free.

Soon, therefore, the streets of Toi were thronged
with above two hundred wives, urging the Captain, with
tears, to lend his help and authority, that the soldiery
might be paid and their husbands set at liberty. Un-
conscious of the plot, Wilwolt made answer that the
headmen of the regiments had already been summoned,
and that, when these arrived, reckoning and payment
should be made and all that was possible arranged.
Having said this, he thought no more of the
matter; but while he was eating in the paymaster’s
house, the women collected all the prentices and
porters of the town, with ‘what they could find of
evil folk,’ and, having raised their courage by drink,
arrived ‘all unbeknownst into the said house with
great tempestuousness.’ The Captain had several of
the higher rank of the footmen with him, and together
they could easily have quelled the tumult ; but when
these saw the ‘notable number of the people, with
their manner and gestures, each man looked at his
neighbour and stole away.’ Wilwolt went out on to
the stairs to meet the women and asked politely what
they wanted, and when they answered that they
wished to take him with them to Arras, to compel the
soldiers to set their husbands free, he gave them his
word that he would attend to the matter with all
industry and dispatch. It was of no avail, however,
and the mob surged with violence up the stairs.
Wilwolt had by now only one of his servants near him,
and the two men seized their daggers and defended
themselves as best they could. The ruffians were
armed with pikes and pressed them continually back-
wards. At last the Captain drew back into the room
again and fastened the door behind him ; but the mob
burst it down and pursued him. Fortunately, there
was an inner chamber, and before they could burst the
door of this also he took his great golden chain from
his neck and thrust jit into the servant’s bosom, In

THE WIVES OF TOI 215

another moment this slight defence was also de-
molished and the termagants ‘ fell in upon him, asked
not at all after the servant, since all their thoughts
were on him alone, but took him thus by force, led
him to a house right across the market-place, with all
the rascals and rapscallions running behind.’

Here was a predicament. But if the Captain’s
guests bad no stomach for battle, at least the Captain’s
cook had kept his wits. So this genius ran to the
burgomaster to tell what was happening, reminding
him of the safe-conduct and advising him ‘ to look to
the matter quickly’ lest worse befall himself. The
worthy man was greatly alarmed, and, seizing his
weapons, came running with his council and his grooms
to beat back the mob. When the male ruffians be-
came aware of the rescuers, they prudently withdrew
from the fray ; but the women, seeing that their plan
of imprisoning Schaumburg had failed, seized their
bread-knives and endeavoured to stab him. And,
although he beat off their thrusts as best he could, he
was severely wounded in the arm before the relief
party could bring him out of danger. The burgo-
master and his council made abject excuses, declaring
their entire ignorance of the affair, and Wilwolt, whose
single desire was to get out of the town, and who
feared, should it be supposed that he was angry, that
they would keep him in custody, made gracious replies.
In any case, he concluded, ‘ it was almost insufferable
to him to have undergone such handling from strange
women in their town, but with their knowledge it
would have been ridiculous ; whence he gladly be-
lieved them.’

The Captain was, indeed, bent on escaping at any
cost, and soon devised an ingenious plan for the hood-
winking of his officious guardians. He first gave the
innkeeper ten golden crowns to prepare for him ‘a
rioble and good banquet,’ and he then invited to it
the burgomaster and the council with all their wives.
But when everything was arranged and the guests

2i6 a master of war

were about to arrive, he sent twelve of his halberdiers
‘ as for a stroll,’ following after them himself on horse-
back with one servant. The keepers of the gate were
inclined to hinder his departure, but the halberdiers
lowered their weapons and kept them quiet till he was
through. ‘ And thereupon Sir Wilwolt and his servant
took their ways to Brabant.’ When the burgomaster
and council heard of his departure they were by no
means pleased, for they rightly feared that ‘ these
wounds would not heal without noise,’ and that they
would have to atone for the outrage that had befallen
under their safe-conduct. As a fact, they were com-
pelled to pay the Duke 4,000, and the Captain 500,
florins for their negligence.

Here ended the adventure for Wilwolt,- but the
behaviour of a member of his escort rouses the chroni-
cler’s literary zeal by its likeness to events of the
Round Table days. ‘ It has already been written how,
when the tumult of the women arose, they who were
with Sir Wilwolt had each one, as best he might, with-
drawn himself away. Now there had been given to
him a Netherlandish gentleman and knight to help pay
the soldiery. This good man burrowed into a heap
of corn, buried himself under the grain, supposing
that none would seek or see him there ; sojourned in
sore anxiety a long while thereunder, but at length
stretched forth his neck to hear and discover whether
the tumult of the tempestuous weather still continued :
and when they told him that all was over, then was he
glad and reckoned himself a hero. And in this he
was even as the Trtlchsess Morido, who also thought
to win the young Queen Isotte of Ireland.^ For when
the boaster beheld the dead men whom the dear and
manly prince Sir Tristan had slain and knightly over-
thrown, he was so sore afeared that he fell to the
ground. But when he had assured himself that all
were really dead, and that Sir Tristan was not there

* The Seneschal Marjodo in Gottfried von Strasburg’s Tristan,

1. 9740.'

TROUBLE IN GUELDERLAND

217

although he had found his horse, he bethought him
that the prince also must be slain, grew glad and took
to himself the manly feat, whereby he came to shame
from each and every one. So this one also declared
his manful deeds, but was well laughed at for his
pains, and another man was sent to pay the soldiery.’

As for Wilwolt, he was not long out of danger, for
he was soon devoting his energies to Guelderland,
the home of high horses and bare swords swift
from the hand,* where his antagonist was that irre-
pressible Charles of Egmond, who played the part
of gadfly with such brilliant success to so many
regents of the Netherlands. The task was a thankless
one, and the campaign was as inconclusive as all
attempts against Egmond seemed fated to be. But it
served at least the excellent purpose of tightening the
bonds between Wilwolt and his master. Indeed, so
proud was Duke Albrecht of the manner in which his
Chief Captain assaulted and won the little town and
fortress of Battenburg,* that he instantly presented the
victor with the fruit of his toil. And for seven years
thereafter — ^though in the heart of Guelderland, and
girdled by enemies — ^the hero Wilwolt held this fortress,
‘ no man daring to seek to win it from him again.’

VII

Wilwolt’s life of warfare continued unbroken till the
year 1495, when he snatched a brief holiday and went, in
the company of Duke Albrecht, to the Diet of Worms.
This was ‘the Great Diet’ summoned by Maximilian

1 Hooghe peerden
Blancke sweerden
Rascbe van der hant.

Dat sijn de snaphane van Gelderland,

says a contemporary epigram. Roger Ascham complained of the
‘ thieves called snaphanses^ in complete harness,’ who infested this
country.

* * He took the Towne of Batenbourchby Scalado,’ writes Grimeston-
But the feat is attributed to Duke Albrecht

2I8

A MASTER OF WAR

with intent to procure a suitable equipment both for his
coronation as Emperor at the hands of the Pope and
for a mighty enterprise — ^with himself as the Captain
of Europe — against that common and ever-threatening
enemy, the Turk. It was also the Diet at which the
princes and Estates, labouring with ill-digested if
most sorely needed plans for internal reform, put
forward their schemes for an Imperial Court, an
Imperial Council, and a permanent ‘ Landfriede ’ or
prohibition of private wars and feuds. Not one of
these fine ambitions was destined to be realised, for
the public peace of the Empire remained at the mercy
of that mediaeval spirit of lawlessness that still ran wild
even in the near neighbourhood of her richest cities ;
the government of the country lay helpless before
the secret fires and ferments, both religious and
political, that were soon to come to light in the blaze
of the Reformation ; the Imperial coronation never
took place ; the Turkish expedition, owing to the
sudden irruption of the King of France into Italy,
had to be indefinitely postponed ; while the hated
poll-tax was set aside by the simple device, adopted
almost unanimously by the Emperor’s subjects, of
refusal to pay.

This doom of failure does not seem, however, to
have impaired the gaiety of the present festival.^ It
was on this occasion that Wiirtemberg was trans-
formed into a duchy, and to celebrate ‘ this joyfulness ’
the splendid joust was arranged that was to crown
Maximilian’s reputation as a champion of strength and
skill. For a few months earlier a challenge had been
given and accepted in a manner worthy of the best

^ Friedrich 2 om records strange and ‘ swinish’ amusements at this
Diet on the part of the German nobility. ‘ One evening there were
24 at the Swan who ate together a raw goose, feathers and all, and
drank and squandered 174 measures of wine, challenging one another
therewith. Item, one evening they had a festivity at the Neuhaus^
and there were 34 tables furnished, and they drank and spilled wine
that one might have waded therein. The meal cost 100 florii^^s sp-d,
full 100 glasses were broken.’ ( Wormser Chronik^

THE GREAT DIET OF WORMS 219

traditions of Don Quixote : one Clau de Wadre (Claude
de Vauldrey, a kinsman of Wilwolfs ally at Arras,
and a famous and invincible fighter) having set forth
to seek adventure at the hand of the King of the
Romans. After a perilous journey — in which the
master, with indomitable valour, drew his sword against
the lightning, and the man beheld a vision of the devil
on horseback ‘ outrageously horrible ’ ‘ — the challenger
had delivered his defiance in the name of The beauti-
ful Giantess with the Yellow Lock. And Maximilian,
with genial valour, had promptly accepted it.

So lists were arranged with great magnificence, all
hung with cloth of gold and of arras, and the Queen
of the Romans and her ladies, pompous and gay, filled
the stands. And when the champions had left the
sumptuous pavilion in which they were accoutred,
and come to their places, the herald appeared and
made his proclamation : ‘ Cried aloud and commanded
that one and all should be silent ; should not disturb
the fighters, whether by call or cry, by beck or blink,
but should suffer them to fight together and defend
themselves ; and whoso disobeyed, of what state
soever he might be, it should not protect him, but
without mercy his head should be struck off.’

Clau de Wadre, ‘ a lovely strong High-Burgundian
man,’ ® rode first into the lists, ‘ his lance set on his
saddle.’ Then came the King of the Romans in his
tilting harness, with lance in rest. So soon as the
trumpets blew, they struck together with their spears ;
but it was not till the heroes had seized their swords
that Maximilian gained the advantage of which he was
so proud. When at length the King had succeeded
in overcoming and disarming his adversary, a great
mellay took place between the highest princes and
nobles of the Empire, all armed with long and broad

^ Cf. Molinet.

* ‘ Ung des plus apperts et duyts chevaliers de guerre qui fust au
monde,’ wrote the ‘ Loyal Serviteur.’ • It was against Claude de
Vauldiey that Bayard had, only a year before, won his first triumph
In the lists at Lyons.

220

A MASTER OF WAR

swords, half being within and half without the lists.
‘And they strove, they of the outside to be in, and
they of the inside to be out ; and they strove with each
other long and hard, and also seized each other, and
those of the outside dragged those of the inside by
force out of the lists, so that here two and there three
lay on the top of one another.’

Nor did Wilwolt remain in idleness throughout the
festivities, despite the fact that he had left his armour
and horses at Battenburg. Maximilian, it must be
said, had ‘ for the further adornment of this business,’
commanded that his princes and knights should
assume the names of the old Round Tablers, and ‘as
in the times of King Arthur also happened, sociably
fight and strive with one another.’ For this purpose
a Queen had been needful, and, ‘by reason of her
loveliness,’ the knights had chosen a maiden out of the
women’s apartments to be their sovereign lady. This
damsel, again, was bound to select a champion, so she
straightway summoned Duke Albrecht of Saxony to
her presence, reminded him of the immemorial fame of
Worms and its Rose-Garden in the annals of chivalry,^
spoke very beguilingly to him of his own glistering
renown, and laid upon him her commands to com-
bat the next day before Queen Bianca and herself.
The Duke responded in terms of suitable modesty and
zeal, and, sending post-haste for Wilwolt, whom he
‘ held as the dearest of his captains,’ desired him to
be his opponent in the play. Schaumburg hesitated,
owing to his lamentably denuded condition ; but the
Duke generously promised to provide him with harness
of a goodly size and a horse to his pleasure, and his

* Planted by the lovely Chrimhild, daughter of King Kibich, on an
island in the Rhine. It was a league long and half a league wide,
*all apparelled in roses,’ with a great lime-tree in the middle that
could shelter five hundred noble ladies. Its only fence was a slight
thread of silk, but this was guarded by twelve princes who battled
with all invaders. At every fresh triumph the victor received a kiss
from the Princess and a crown of roses. Cf. Der grosse Rosengarten^
Hagen und Primisser.

biPLOMACV IN FRANCE 42 t

hesitations quickly vanished away. On the great day,
therefore, he rode with his master into the lists, ‘ being
wholly covered in an arming coat of velvet, and his
panoply wrapped in a goodly damask.’ At the very
first shock their lances sprang into splinters ; where-
upon they seized their swords, and lashed it out so
long and lustily ‘ that the like had not happened twice
before.’ And after the evening banquet the Queen
honoured both the champions with a dance.

Nor was this Schaumburg’s only traffic with royalty,
for he was soon journeying ‘ ambassador-wise ’ to
Charles VIII. of France, to claim payment for his
master of certain moneys owing since the wars against
Charles the Bold. Duke Albrecht, in fact, was at this
period in the most dire straits of penury. In the
course of the Netherlandish war he had lent to Maxi-
milian and the Archduke Philip above three thousand
gold florins, and unremitting efforts had not availed
to recover any portion of this vast sum.^ ‘ For him
were naught but good words, which gladden fools
and do not break the head of the wise.’ He now,
therefore — and the incident is not devoid of a certain
regrettable mystery — turned his hopes and his atten-
tions to the French Crown.

France, at all events, appears to have seen her
opportunity and to have made the most of it, for it
was ever her earnest desire to detach the great princes
of Germany from their rightful allegiance. Wilwolt
was escorted to Orleans with pomp and received with
effusion, and there he was repeatedly informed
that if he would but induce the Saxon prince to
become the servant of the King of France, the Duke
should receive a yearly pension of 100,000 francs,

* In 1492 Duchess Sidonia of Saxony writes patheticaOy to her son
George that his father has, after much adventure, taken Sluys and
that, if Maximilian will only pay him, he promises soon to nettun to
her. And ^ain, in 1495, ®he complains of the sacrifices demanded
of him. The King of the Romans can make many charming offers,
but never does he say ‘ I will right thy wrongs, and what thou hast
earned repay thee.’ {Privatbriefe^ i.)

ii 2 A MASTER OE WAR

nor ever be required to fight against the Holy
Roman Emperor. As for the ambassador himself,
he should be rewarded for his services in the matter
with 4,000 crowns, in earnest whereof the King pre-
sented him with a silver goblet, that contained over
forty marks’ worth of pure silver, excusing himself for
the smallness of the offering by a reference to his
recent costly expedition to Naples : ‘ therefore should
Sir Wilwolt now hold this sufficient and arrange the
matter well ; and next time he would better his gift.’
Schaumburg promised affably to spare no possible
pains. But when Maximilian and Philip heard of the
matter they hurriedly undertook to pay and defray all
that they owed, if only the Duke would abstain from
‘becoming French.’ So the affair ended — as many
others had done — in a mist of Hapsburg promises, and
Wilwolt returned to his duties in Guelders not much
the richer for his diplomatic excursion.

But if his purse was thin his heart was stout, and
the tide of adventure rolls on. Now he achieves a
gallant rescue of Duke Albrecht from the hands of
four thousand rebellious burghers of Brussels, whom
he outwits by the aid of a student’s disguise and the
free use of monstrous and impossible threats. Now
he appears in philanthropic guise, risking his career
for the sake of an ancient friendship.

This (for it is a cheerful story) had to do with a
captain of fortune named Neidhart Fuchs, ‘ a wise in-
genious man and a serious warrior, dear and peace-
able,’ who, having entangled himself in a quarrel with
the Bishop of Utrecht, sought out his old comrade to
ask for his help and advice. Now, though Wilwolt
remembered that his master was warmly attached to
the Bishop, and that to espouse the wrong side might
arouse the Duke’s serious displeasure, ‘ yet did it far
more go to his heart to send this knightly hero and his
men comfortless away.’ So he helped Neidhart to
inspect the ground where the battle was likely to take
place, and exhorted him to have manful courage and

A FEAST OF BATTLE 223

heart. ‘ If the luck goes against you and you must
flee/ he urged, ‘ come hither for shelter, and I with my
cannon will save, guard and defend you to the best of
my power.’

Neidhart went off joyfully, and Wilwolt ordered his
artillery to the best advantage. Then, having received
a message to the effect that the battle was to be on the
morrow, he was suddenly struck with an illuminating
idea. This was that in all the battles in which he had
taken part, he had always had himself so much to do,
that he had never rightly witnessed one ; and that here
and now was evidently his opportunity. More than
this, it would surely be selfish to keep the entertain-
ment to himself. So down he sat and wrote to all the
most beautiful ladies of the town and neighbourhood
to come to him ‘ for merriment and diversion.’

They accepted gladly, and, filled with importance, he
arranged a fine banquet on the tower that was walled
one-and-thirty feet thick and named Schweigutricht.
Here, at the appointed moment, he led his lovely
guests and their husbands, comforting them with as-
surances of their safety, and feasting them with unac-
customed lavishness that they might be in a fit mood to
see the play. The more was the pity, when it appeared
that the brilliancy of the entertainment had been im-
paired by his own intervention ; for, having discovered
that the town guns were ready to take part in the
combat, the Bishop resorted to prudence, and, after a
brief demonstration, retired. The ladies were sorely
displeased at this episcopal cowardice, for they longed
to see a real battle. ‘ It might have been as diverting
for them as for the Lady Trunhild^ in the Rose-
Garden.’

This was not, however, the end of the dangers into
which Wilwolt was led by his connection with
Neidhart Fuchs, and, thanks to the further indiscretions
of this lively adventurer, he was soon face to face with
the chief exploit and triumph of his life. For Fuchs
* Chrimhild? See supra, p. 220, note i.

224 A MASTER OF WAR

now transferred himself and his eight hundred mer-
cenaries to Friesland — ^where the Hooks and Cods
were once more in a state of violent eruption — and, by
adopting the cause of the Hooks, seriously upset the
normal balance of the parties. Feeling ran high and
higher, and the country flowed with blood; whoso
was strongest killed his neighbour, ‘ regardless
whether he were father or son, brother, cousin, uncle,
or kinsman by marriage.’ At last the Cod-fish came
in a body to Wilwolt to implore his help.

Unwilling to take the responsibility, the Captain
referred the matter to Duke Albrecht at the Diet of
Lindau, who in his turn appealed to the Emperor, and
was at once appointed hereditary ‘jubernator’ or
potestate of Friesland, with the onerous duty of
quelling the disturbances. And hereupon (in 1498)
Wilwolt was sent to subdue the fierce little country on
his master’s behalf.^

VIII

Now the Frieslanders, says Eyb, had for eight hundred
years been a ‘seriously fighting people,’ refusing all
mastery, and claiming in their statutes to be ‘ free as
the wind so long as it blew.’ * When Philip the Good
of Burgundy had sent his captain, Egmond, with
sixty thousand men, to reduce them to obedience, they
had themselves been reduced to speedy death, and
buried — ^so it would seem — ‘ in one grave.’ The land
also had long been laid waste by chronic feuds and
by the struggles of Groningen, the capital city, to

* ‘ The duke, to take possession of that which was offered him, and
which he had so much affected, sent the seignior Willebrom of
Schooneburch a knight, his councellor and treasorer generah, with
an ample commission to treat with them ; joyning with him the
Collonel Nythard IFoox and Bernard Mets with their Regiments.’
(Grimeston.)

* ‘ They wolde not be subject to no man,’ writes Boorde. Even the
vermin were afraid of them : ‘ I beshrew the louse that pyncheth us
by the back ! ’

F&IBSI,AND.

From a woodcut iUustmtiasr ih« * d® Surop®. * of Mnmm Sylviii®, ®d, of *57*.

FRIESLAND 225

establish its authority over the rest of the country.
Add to this, that the unsavoury fame of the lands-
knechts made the Saxon appointment far from
popular.

The undertaking was therefore no light one. Nor
was it made more feasible by the fact that, while the
enemy were over ten thousand strong, Wilwolt, even
when joined by Fuchs and his band, had with him less
than a thousand men, and that the first encounter came
about at the very spot — well named Geisterland—
where the great slaughter of the Burgundians had
taken place.

The position, indeed, seemed far from inviting, being
surrounded on three sides by the sea and on the
fourth by a bog and deep ditch, through which none
could pass save by one narrow pathway ; and Wilwolt
would gladly have avoided an engagement. But he
had little choice in the matter, for when he reconnoitred
he found the Frieslanders lying in force close by, and
so great were their numbers and so long their pikes ^
and their leaping-poles, that ‘ he bethought him verily
that he was looking upon a wood.’

Disturbed at finding that ‘ the vermin ' were so
many, and fearing that they might open the sluices
and drown his entire force, Schaumburg determined
on an immediate attack. His plan was for the troops
to advance upon the enemy in full order of battle, to
halt as though alarmed when but a short distance
from them, and then to feign panic and flight. The
enemy would certainly pursue them, making a rope
with which to cross over the sluice ; and hereupon he
would turn his men and engage them. The only fear
was lest the landsknechts, being in full flight, and
seeing so great a horde at their heels, might refuse to
turn; so Wilwolt had once more recourse to elo-
quence. ‘Dear brothers,’ he ended, ‘ye see these

* ‘ Four feet longer than those ot our landsknechts, which they call
SchoUen^ Yet about this time Maximilian was providing his troops
with ashen spears eighteen feet long.

226 A MASTER OF WAR

great heaps of people. Round us is the sea, behind us
the bog, before us the enemy ; and here we must win
through. Have trust in God and be of good courage,
for this worketh wonders with enemies. Let us look
faithfully to one another, and hold by one another.
So alone will good come of it.’

The suggestion pleased the soldiers exceedingly,
and the first act of the comedy was duly carried out.
But the enemy saw through the plot : ‘ the Fries-
landers stood, stretched out their necks like geese,
would not pursue.’ The Captain was thoroughly
alarmed and at his wits’ end, when a Frieslandish
deserter chanced to tell him that, on the other side of
the ditch, there lay a town. Wilwolt instantly formed
a new plan, and, under cover of his guns, ‘ digged
with haste ’ and filled in the ditch so effectually that
even the artillery was able to pass over. Then,
having again drawn up his troops in battle order and
placed his guns according to the wind, he sent Neid-
hart Fuchs to fire the town. ‘ The enemy raged,
and made straightway for him.’ The badger was
successfully drawn, and the battle had begun.

When the Germans saw their foes advancing, they
all, according to their custom, kneeled down and
prayed for good fortune and victory ; and the Fries-
landers, supposing that they were begging for mercy,
cried all together : Sfe trenschy, trenschy, that they
would drown them all.’ ^ The Captain feared that his
men might abandon the guns, so with urgent eloquence
adjured them still ‘to say their prayers, and not to
suffer themselves to be led astray,’ or he would shoot
them down. Even before he had finished his little
speech, the Friesland cannon were loosed off right at
them ; but the shots fell too high, and only one man

^ In this the Frieslanders resembled Paulus Jovius, who describes
the praying Germans at Cerisola as lying on the ground to avoid
the cannon balls ; and, at Pavia, as prone on the earth and singing
wild songs. He also tells of their mos antzguissimus of scattering
dust three times in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.

GEISTERLAND 227

was hit. In answer the Captain promptly discharged
his own artillery, which ‘went right well at the
enemy.’ This appears to have exhausted the shooting
capacities of the two armies ; for both sides now
lowered their pikes, and they were quickly engaged
at close quarters. And here Wilwolt’s skill as a
general is shown, for by his command a body of
skirmishers [Katzbalger) and halberdiers dashed with
their halberds right athwart ^ the pikes ; and before
these could draw back and come again to the thrust,
the landsknechts ran swiftly forward till they closed
with the enemy. ‘And they pressed on, and stuck
two ranks with one thrust.’

The main army of the Frieslanders took to flight,
but there was a second army at the side ; and Wilwolt
cried to his men to keep strictly to their ranks, for
should they separate and fall to plundering worse
might come of it* He then took ‘ two of the hinder-
most ranks of the gunners, and cut the enemy down ;
they with the short weapons followed after, let these
not get up again, but beat them thoroughly dead.
Thereafter followed the main body.’ The second
army of the Frieslanders, seeing that the Germans
would not allow themselves to be broken up, now
also took to their heels, and when Schaumburg saw it
he shouted joyfully to his men to follow as they
pleased. This they accordingly did, and over 5,000
Frieslanders were slain.

The remainder of this short campaign was accom-
plished with a like gallant energy, though the Captain
was sorely hindered by the disobedience of his troops.
Thus at the siege of Leeuwarden, their insubordina-
tion nearly cost him the victory. He had advanced
against the enemy with his cavalry, sending word to
the footmen to follow quickly and support him. But

* See Illustrative Notes, 39.

* * He that with disorder followeth the enemie after that he is
broken wiE do no other than to become of a conquerour a losen'
(MadiiaveEi.}

Z2B a master of war

this order their head men — ‘ the vintners, the butchers,
the leaders of the common women, and other of the
^ros hansn ’ — entirely declined to obey, fearing, so
they declared, that the townspeople might steal their
merchandise or their women. ‘ The which verily
would have been but a small misfortune,’ comments
the chronicler ironically : ‘ but herein they betrayed
their natures ; for when they obtain some little
advantage, and are not in fear of present imminent
death, they will bestir themselves for no one.’ Mean-
while the Captain, unaware of their knavery, pressed
the Frieslanders so well that they threw up their
hands, petitioning for mercy and ‘ knightly imprison-
ment.’ Wilwolt, believing that his foot-soldiers were
following, and fearing that they would certainly betray
his promise and 'stick’ all the prisoners, dared not
give any such assurances. He therefore delayed
matters till his troops should come up, and many of
the Frieslanders escaped, ‘ running for three days,
bare-foot, bare-headed and unclothed.’ When Wilwolt
learned the treachery of the landsknechts, ‘ he could
have torn out his own hair for woe and anguish, for
the enemy had all been in his hands.’ And when, on
his return to the camp, the head men came to ask
how matters had gone, he would not speak to them,
but shut himself into his room and had his food and
drink passed in to him. The conduct of the ruffians
was indeed the more ungrateful that — ‘seeing they
were not well-dressed ’ — he had recently new-clothed
them all in his own colours of white and black.^

At Groningen, again, the soldiers of Neidhart Fuchs
played an even viler trick, which cost the life of ‘ that

^ The landsknechts were nsnally clothed in a very haphazard fashion.
Compare Brant6me*s description of them on their march to Rome,
arrayed “ plus i la pandarde qu’k la propretd, portant des chemises
k longues et grandes manches comme Boh^mes ou Mores, qui leur
duraient vestues plus de deux or trois mois sans changer, monstrant
leurs poictrines velues, pelues, toutes descouvertes, et aussy la chaire
de la cuisse, voire mesme plus haut ; les chausses bouffantes, bigarrdes,
d6chiquet6es, balaflfrdes, et le haut de chausses pendu k la ceinture
pour garder les jambes nues,” (Brant6me, Des Coronnels Franqcds^

NEIDHART FUCHS 229

dear hero.’ When Count Edzard of East Friesland
sent for psistance against the rebels, Wilwolt dis-
patched his trusted friend, with four hundred footmen
and the sensible advice to go round by sea. Neidhart,
however, ‘ albeit, as often declared, a brave man, was
on the water fit for naught ; did but the smallest wind
or wave rise up, he lay there like a dead man, all
shipsick.’ So, with lamentable rashness, he deter-
mined to follow the land road. This led close to the
disturbed city of GrQningen, and the citizens at once
swarmed out, 1,200 strong, to stop him. Considering
the smallness of his force, he decided to retire into a
strong abbey that lay near at hand, and issued his
commands accordingly. But the landsknechts, suppos-
ing that they had only burgesses and peasants to
deal with, not only declined to obey, but loaded him
with abuse : ‘ said that they had in all their days held
him for an honest man ; that they were astounded, and
that not unreasonably, at his behaviour that day ; ad-
monished him, with many threats, to advance against
the enemy.’ Heidhart answered fiercely: ‘You shall
see to-day that I am no poltroon ; and you shall see
much else to-day also, and remember what I have
said.’ Then, making the best of a miserable business,
he prepared to attack. It at once became apparent
that the opposing force consisted of proper men-at-
arms, and now, of course, the footmen were bent on
running away ; ‘ but Fuchs, the worthy hero, cried to
them that it was no longer time for shirking,’ threw
himself off his horse and out of his armour, and
stalked at the head of his men. The landsknechts,
thus encouraged, thrust through three ranks of the
GrSningers, right up to their main standard. ‘But,
dear God, the multitude was too great, and they
sprang from both sides at Fuchs’s banner, caused
them to yield ; and Neidhart was shot with a g^n and
fell And so soon as- he lay there his knaves fled
away.’ ^

* !j:f. JCoelhofiPs Crmiat,

A MASTER OF WAR

230

Despite these hindrances Wilwolt was able, after a
few weeks of constant warfare, to invite his master
to enjoy the fruits of his toil, and accordingly wrote
to inform Duke Albrecht that the conquered country
lay at his command. And at this, Eyb breaks into
a passion of surprise and delight that curiously
illuminates the ordinary habits and methods of
fifteenth-century lieutenants. ‘ For surely,’ he ex-
claims, ‘ every war and world-wise man will consider
what great honourableness was in this Captain.’ The
common people in Friesland had thought no otherwise
than that Sir Wilwolt was to be their rightful lord.
Rustics and country folk ever held more by possession
than by honour or justice, and, as the powerful owner
of Friesland, he might well have secured the daughter
of a Duke of Hohenstein or of a great mighty lord
out of England, with whose help he could easily have
kept the country from all the Dukes of Saxony.
Moreover, with the exception of a paltry 1,500 florins
doled out to him at the start, the costs of the whole
campaign had been squeezed from his own exchequer,
all that he had laid by — and this was no small sum
— in thirteen years of battle and great adventure
in the Netherlands, having passed into the rapacious
hands of his troops. Nor had he been provided
by Duke Albrecht with so much as a finger-long
letter or manuscript that might constitute a claim.
In brief, there was no doubt that he might, with
perfect justice and equity, have kept the coxmtry for
himself, at the least until his lord had satisfied any
demands he had chosen to make. ‘Verily, he was
more pious than that Duke who, at the Venetians’ cost
and damage, took Milan, and held himself therewithin,
even till the King of France won it and imprisoned
him.’ ^

But, his calling notwithstanding, the soul of
Wilwolt was no mercenary one, and he remained im-

* Lodovico il Moro was a prisoner at Lpcbes in 1507, when Eyb
was writing'.

FRIENDSHIP 231

swervingly loyal to the master who had shown him
unswerving kindness and faith. So Duke Albrecht
arrived and took over the country, and was received
with unparalleled rejoicings and honour. And, since
‘language failed the worthy inhabitants’ when they
wished to express their inordinate gratification and
joy at the event, the Captain was induced to convey
their sentiments in his most ‘lovely and beautiful
words.’

Wilwolt, indeed, was prevented from taking a very
active part in the ceremonies that followed, for he fell
into so great a sickness that all the doctors despaired
of his life. He could take no food save ‘ the powders
of pearls, corals and other precious stones; and no
drink save woman’s or other good milk.’ * Now was
the time for his master to show his gratitude, and he
was not behindhand in so doing. ‘ And when,' writes
Eyb proudly, ‘ the noble prince wholly despaired of
his best-loved Captain’s life, he caused to be made for'
him a copper coffin, with the intent, so soon as he
expired, to commit him thereinto, and, with him thus
dead, to proceed to Meissen, where the princes of
Saxony have their sepulture.’ The Duke even went
so far as to choose his tomb. ‘ And I cannot refrain
from writing, that not all princes are as this one. For
he had remembered the honour and high faithfulness
of his chosen Captain, to reward him not only in
life with much respect, but also after his death to add
a burial whereby he should be held in everlasting
remembrance. But one findeth not many such princes
who bethink them of such things, but rather do
they suffer their servants, knights, and soldiers to

^ ‘Some mix powdered pearls and precious stones to strengthen
the heart in great and severe illnesses, weaknesses or Votings.*
(RyfF, in Scheible^s Klosfer^ vi,) Pope Clement VII. is said to have
eaten 40,000 ducats* worth of pearls, precious stones and unicc«m®s
horn in fourteen days. The last item on the list of Wilwolt’s medica-
ments was also in frequent use, both internally and externally. The
learned Jean Goeurot, doctor to Francois I., recommended ^ a remedy
for ‘migraine’: ‘faire tondre les cheveux, et y faire traire laict de
nourrisse qui ailaicte une fille,’ (C£ Franklin.)

A MASTER OF WAR

332

be stricken down, even as the hounds^ which in a
boar-hunt are left lying miserable and unremembered
on the field.’ Wilwolt, however, recovered, spared
‘ by the mild Giver of all Grace to perform many more
goodly deeds.’

And, in truth, ‘ more goodly deeds ’ were soon
required of him, to make good the conquest which he
had seemed to achieve so rapidly. For, after a brief
interval, filled by a campaign in Guelders, there came
the terrible news that the Frieslanders were once more
up in arms, and that young Duke Heinrich of Saxony,*
who had been left there as Governor, was in direst
straits at Franeker. Duke Albrecht received the news
while attending the Diet at Augsburg, and at once
applied to Maximilian for help. Roman Majesty was
by no means inclined to dispense with the services of
his best general, and ordered Wilwolt to go in his
stead. But at this ‘the noble sorrowful Duke’ was
moved to wrath, and answered so passionately that
himself should rescue his own flesh and blood, nor be
hindered therefrom by any king or prince soever,
that Maximilian gave way. So Duke Albrecht bade
farewell to the Diet in the time-honoured manner.
Taking to him two friends, he ‘ set many casks upon
a waggon, and therewith trumpeters, pipers and
pla3nng-folk, singers and songstresses ’ ; went first to
the apartments of the Queen of the Romans, and
then, the whole night long, ran from one prince’s lodg-
ment to another, making music and cheer before each.
'And thus did the pious and world-blessed prince
drink the stirrup cup' with his lords and friends.’ On
the following day Albrecht and his faithful Captain
started for the rebellious province. '

The expedition prospered from the outset, thanks to
Schaumburg’s knowledge of the country and ingenuity

^ Ruden in the Nuremberg MS. Keller has rinder^ which has no
meaning in this connection.

* Second son of Duke Albrecht, and father of the famous Elector
Moritz.

THE RELIEF OF FRANEKER 233

of mind in defeating the enemy’s tactics. A great
battle was fought and won near Workum, under
such circumstances as had been the undoing of many
a gallant general. For close by ran ‘ a deep and grisly
water, not to be fathomed,' and the enemy had
carefully prepared for their reception two formidable
sluices. These, indeed, almost caused a panic among
the landsknechts, for they remembered with terror the
recent defeats of the Duke of Brunswick and the King
of Denmark, who, for ignorance of the ways of water,
had lost in the resulting confusion no less than 16,000
men. Wilwolt, however, was equal to the emergency,
and instantly produced sixteen planks and a band of
carpenters, by the means of which he stemmed the
flood and took possession of the sluices. The Fries-
landers were now bombarded by the German guns for
five whole hours, and ‘ one saw on both sides heads,
legs and arms falling.’ At last, unable to hold out any
longer, they lay down, sticking their spears upright in
the ground, that it should be supposed that they were
still standing in order. But the Captain, * seeing that
heads and other things no longer fell,’ detected the
manoeuvre, and commanded the gunners to shoot
along the ground. The enemy took to flight, and the
day was won.

The victory made easier an approach to Franeker,
and Wilwolt urged on ahead with 600 ‘ running
soldiers.’ When close to the beleaguered city he sent
forward some of his men ‘ with a hat raised on high,
that they in the town should not shoot,’ to give the glad
tidings of relief; but the news seemed too marvellous
to be true to the miserable garrison, and he had to
climb up on to the entrenchment and show himself in
person before they would believe it. Duke Heinrich
himself was at table eating, and the soldiers fell over
one another in their eagerness to obtain the guerdon.^

• ‘ Pottenprot : ’ the reward to the first bearer ol good news. It
was the nniversal custom in Gennany to bestow a ‘botenbrod,’ or
gtHcngeUum,

A MASTER OF WAR

234

And hereupon ‘the overjoyed man’ sprang up, and
ordered that the gate, which was barricaded, should
be cleared for the rescuers. This, however, was too
slow a process for the Captain, and he let himself in
through a secret door, by which the garrison had
been wont to importune the enemy in the trenches.
‘And the young prince went to meet him, crying
with great joy : “ O Sir Wilwolt, I would never
have thought or believed that you would have
left me for so long.” And the Captain answered:
“ Gracious lord, it is no meagre distance between the
land of Meissen and here, and it takes time to equip
oneself with troops, money, and all appurtenances." ’
Heinrich then asked after his father, and when the
Captain replied that he lay close by with his army
in the field, ‘ then was the noble young prince so
moved to the heart by this fatherly love and faith-
fulness, that for the greatness of his joy he began to
tremble.’ He presented Wilwolt with a fine charger
as ‘botenbrod,’ and formally received him as his
subject.

And, as a fact, Wilwolt of Schaumburg’s long and
loyal service to Duke Albrecht was nearly at its end.
The prince, already a sick man, now also entered the
city secretly ; and ‘ ah ! what a joy was that between
father and son.’ The enemy was duly driven off and
defeated, and the Duke, seizing the strong fortress and
block-house of Leeuwarden, once more declared him-
self master of the dominion of Friesland.^ But his
illness developed rapidly, and he was soon lying on a
bed of death at Emden, his end being hastened and
embittered by the unruliness of his troops. For the

^ ‘ His Father came posting . . , into Friseland, where he made
such a pittifiill spoile as all, both noble and base, rich and poore,
Priestes, Monkes, Nunnes, and Novices, fled out of the Countrie,
none remaining but the poore pesants of the seven Forrests, who
would see what the end might bee of all their miseries. Duke Henry
would gladly they had ruined all Friesland, not being satisfied with
the revenge his Father had teiken. But the Father, with a better
consideration (being of a deeper judgement than his sonne), would
not consent unto it,’ (Grimeston.)

THE DEATH OF DUKE ALBRECHT 235

landsknechts, true to their genial traditions, ‘held a
Judas-council’ with the Frieslanders in the intent to
rob him of both money and freedom. These, needless
to say, were protected by Wilwolt’s devotion. But the
noble Duke’s spirit was tired of the noisy world, and
he stretched him calmly down on a bed of straw, with
a rain-cloak for his only pillow, to die. Taking off his
precious Order of the Golden Fleece, he commanded
that it should be restored to the Archduke Philip
with these words: ‘This is the little lamb which I
have so loved, and ever carried in my heart.’ ^ And
then ‘the sick Prince laid his hands together, and
blessed his faithful servant, commending to him his
children and his dominions by the love and faithful-
ness which they had borne to one another. And
thereafter on the next Friday (September 12, 1500),
between eight and nine of the clock, departed that
high, famous, dear and manly Duke.’ Nor, in the
records of even more merciful epochs, do we often
meet with a braver spirit of loyalty and loving-
kindness than burned in these two men, Albrecht
and Wilwolt, the one a commander of mercenary
armies and the other a captain-adventurer in an iron
age.®

And now the chronicle also draws to a close, for,
whether from emotion at the death of his faithful
friend and patron, or from a mere weariness of his
life of blows, Schaumburg henceforward turned his
thoughts to the lovelier joys of home. At the
insistent request of Duke Heinrich,® he undertook,
however, the further subjection of Friesland, and in
so doing was led to the last and perhaps the wildest
of his vagabond adventures.

* De Mentis Alberti Duds Saxonici. lAtsidsA'. Script. Rer.Germ.VL,

* ‘ He was full of years, of virtue, and of renown,’ writes even Molinet,
the p^sionate foe of all Germans, ' for he was hardy and valiant in
arms, greatly feared of his enemies, just, loyal, and true ; his word
equalled the seal of a prince.’

* Duke George (the Rich, the Learned, or the Beardy), who now
succeeded bis father, was the memorable antagonist of Luther.

236 A MASTER OF WAR

Once more the landsknechts were the criminals.
The country had finally yielded, and the campaign
was at an end, when Wilw’olt arrived at the outlying
townlet of Sneek. It was occupied by a troop of his
own mercenaries ; and these men, under the usual
pretext of insufiicient pay, surrounded his inn with
their guns, declaring their intention of keeping him as
hostage for further supplies. Wilwolt, realising his
danger, managed to escape by the back door, and,
mounting his horse, made for the town-gate. Finding
this in the hands of the foe, he galloped along the
wall, and so out through the second gate and hard
across country to the little block-house and sea-haven
of Harlingen. Here he luckily found a store of good
hackbuts, and, provisioning his shelter with all possible
haste, settled down cheerfully to shoot every lands-
knecht that crossed his horizon until such time as a
vessel should appear to take him off. This soon
occurred, and, having attracted the shipmen’s attention
by a sigpial tied to the tower, he promised them three
times the proper fee if they would convey him back to
Holland. After some delay, owing to the tempestuous
weather, Jie was got aboard, but the sailors at once
explained that, being near:Christmas-tide, they would
certainly meet all the ice coming from Holland, and go
straight to the bottom. Wilwolt was firm, and they
started southward, with a little boat sailing a mile
ahead to report the first sign of danger.

This was not long in making its appearance, for
they had not gone half-way when the scout violently
dipped its sail, according to agreement, and flew back
to them ; and there, sure enough, ‘ came the ice with a
great commotion, looking like a mighty great mountain
upon the sea.’ Turning their helm, they made again
with all speed for Friesland, but were overtaken by
a rushing storm of wind : ‘ and the shipfolk and Sir
Wilwolt and all set their minds to death.’ Snatching
at their one remaining chance, they ran ashore at
th? ebb of the tidej whereupon the country people.

WINTER SEAS 237

having, ‘according to their custom when they see a
ship in distress upon the sea, beaten storm upon
all the bells,’ bravely rode out into the waters and
rescued the shipwrecked crew. Nor were they a
moment too soon, for scarcely were all out of the
vessel when the ice arrived and broke it into frag-
ments. ‘ And I heard,’ adds Eyb, ‘ that in that week
another ship well-laden with landsknechts had started
from Friesland, but had not used a like prudence ;
and the ice had overtaken them and crushed their
ship, and the soldiers had all been drowned. No
one was saved save one landsknecht’s wife with
a little child in her arms, who was blown on an
ice-splinter to Enkhausen. The sailors, discovering
these, brought them in a boat to land, and when
they reached the town the child was dead, by inad-
vertence fro2en.’ The townspeople had this inscribed
in the church ‘for a miracle’; though, to ordinary
minds, it would have seemed more astonishing had
the baby, ‘by inadvertence,’ been alive.

Meanwhile Wilwolt, undaunted, procured a cart and
drove back to his lonely watch-tower, where he lay for
another week spying for ships. Catching one on
Christmas Eve, he set forth once more. But his new
fortune was scarce better than the old, for another
tempest arose, so violent that ‘ the sailors must needs
yield the vessel into God’s power,’ and this time
the winds elected to blow him — like the baby — to
Enkhausen. It was a stronghold of the enemy, and
he feared to land ; but there was no choice. Knowing
that, were he recognised, he would never leave the
place alive, he disguised himself as a landsknecht and
parted from his companions, spending an anxious
night in a lonely inn. But on the morrow Providence
at length befriended him, and, chartering a third ship,
he arrived safely in Holland.

The conquest of Friesland being thus adventurously
completed, and all loyal duty to his dead master dis-
charged, Wilwolt felt himself a free man. Remember-

238 A MASTER OF WAR

ing, therefore, that the ancient seat of his ancestors had
been recently restored to him through the friendly
interposition of that noble Prince, and ‘ bethinking
him that a man should consider his latter days, serve
God, and prepare himself therefor,’ he now satisfied
his debtors, ordered his affairs, and betook him to the
Oberland to the Castle of Schaumburg.^

Here, then, in his full age and the fruition of a
strenuous life, we are called upon to leave ‘ this dear
and noble knight. Sir Wilwolt.’

The old home proved to be almost a ruin, ‘ with no
more than two old halls, without walls or moat, set
upon the hill’; but the rebuilding of it afforded the
tired soldier a peaceful occupation and helped to
divert his thoughts from the activities in which his
life had been spent. In this mountain eyrie he passed
long days of unexciting toil : erecting and fortifying
‘ strong walls, towers, squared ditches, palisades and
bastions,’ arranging and ordering ‘ new chimney-
rooms* and lordly chambers,’ and finally building ‘ a
lovely praiseworthy chapel, wherein he established a
perpetual priest with many holy services, whereby his
parents and all the dead of his race should be remem-
bered to all everlasting, so long as the Castle should
stand.’

Nor were these goodly new halls left long unin-
habited, for while they were as yet but partly
ordered the veteran Wilwolt wooed and wedded
Waltpurga, daughter of Herr Hans Fuchs zu Binpach,
at that time Hofmeister at Wttrzburg. The marriage
took place at Schaumburg, and was attended by
so many distingpiished guests ‘ that on either side

^ Schaumburg or Schauenburg in the Thuringer Wald, Upper
Saxony, which, according to Eyb, had been lost to the family for
eighty years. (Cf. Sach.)

* ^ Kematen ’ (JCemenaten^ camera caminata ) : the chimney or stove
rooms, of which there were never many. A lady, writes Zerkl^e,
should be unknown ‘ uz ir cheminat’ See Illustrative Notes, 40.

A MOST EXCELLENT CAPTAIN 239

there were more than six-and-eighty adorned dames
and damsels to be seen at the dance.’ Over five
hundred horses and more than a thousand attendants
were housed and fed. The field for the runnings,
jousts and ‘ Italian tourneys ’ — which were ‘ merrily
and well accomplished’ — was arranged on the hill
near the dance-house, and the lodgings of the guests
were all prepared in the Castle, ‘ that none for any
need soever might descend the mountain.’ The feast-
ing lasted for four days, whereafter every one departed
‘ in friendship and joy.’

And so the curtain falls upon Wilwolt of Schaum-
burg. To some he may appear but as one of the
innumerable and blood-guilty soldiers of fortune who
peopled and unpeopled Europe in those decorative,
disastrous days; and assuredly his hands were not
always clean of the blood of the innocent. Yet, granted
even the generous portraiture of friendship, he seems
to have drawn nearer to the ideals both of ancient
and of modem chivalry than the most of his contem-
poraries. For he was of those fine and fearless spirits
to whom knightly honour was still — in the words of
Wolfram von Eschenbach — the prize of the body and
the heaven of the soul, who, ‘ aiming beyond money,
and sensible to more than hunger in this world,’ sought
a career on terms of purity and prowess. His intre-
pidity was remarkable, even in an age of boldness ; his
loyalty to his master was the surprise and diversion of
a self-seeking generation ; while in the less prominent
virtues of unselfishness and humanity, he attained to
a pinnacle but rarely reached by the captains of
Maximilian’s armies. That he possessed the qualities
of a great soldier^ appears, moreover, on every page
of the Chronicle. He was valiant; he was expert;
he was wise; he was large in his prudence and he
was lusty in his pride. He was secret also and he
was sudden: dissembling his business till the goal

^ Cf. Machiavelli’s description, in the Art of War, of a ‘most
excellent Captain.’

240 A MASTER OF WAR

was at hand and the ways of flight had been closed.
He was ‘ pious ' and filled with a wholesome faithful-
ness, having ever before his eyes the fear of God.
And he was eloquent: primed with that power of
words, in whose absence ‘with difficulty may be
wrought any good thing.’ Finally, in his methods
of battle-array Schaumburg forestalled the precepts
of the Art of War. Thirty years before the Florentine
Secretary wrote, the German soldier had practised.
And this despite the fact that the niceties of dispo-
sition which crowned his career of ‘happy victory’
against innumerable odds were contrary to the habitual
practices of his countrymen. Of the difficulties which
he encountered from the indiscipline of his troops
enough has been said. The leaders of the lands-
knechts had two armies to contend with : the enemys
and their own. And it was no easy or ordinary
triumph — ‘ in a strange countrie, full of men corrupted,
not used to any honest obedience’ — ^to achieve any
notable victories at all.

Little is known of Wilwolt’s latter years, save that,
like those that went before, they drew the esteem
of his fellows. As in his morning strength he had
climbed the goodly stairs of courtesy and courage, §o
in the hours of his sunset did he abide upon the
pleasant hills of peace.

‘ And if,’ concludes the chronicler, ‘ I have not
brought to light his worthy deeds in such a manner as
I would fain have done — if they are somewhat un-
courtly and unskilfully set forth — I pray me all readers
and reasonable folk for forgiveness; and that they
should measure my simpleness, and take heed of my
small learning, education and skill ; and may they so
order their own lives as to be pleasant to God an<i
honourable to themselves, and may we all hereafter
attain to unending honour and joy. Amen.’

THE ADVENTURES OF A
PALSGRAVE

INTRODUCTORY

The Annals of the Count — later Elector — Palatine Fred-
erick II. are better known than either of the foregoing
chronicles. Written originally in Latin in the middle
of the sixteenth century, the work was not published
till some seventy years later. This Latin edition was,
however, quickly followed by a German translation
under the pleasant title ‘ Spiggel des Humors grosser
Potentaten ’ : A Mirror of the Moods of mighty Poten-
tates. And finally, in the middle of last century, it
was rendered into modem German by Eduard von
BqIow. The annalist himself, Hubertus Thomas
Leodius (or of Lifege),^ was a man of very different stamp
from the biographer of Wilwolt of Schaumburg. Bom
in the Netherlands of a burgher stock in the year
1495, he was transplanted to Germany at the age of
seventeen, and his laborious youth was spent partly
in the Imperial Chancery at Worms and partly in the
Electoral Chancery at Heidelberg.

Now when Frederick, Palsgrave of the Rhine, de-
cided to write a love-letter to the widowed Queen of
Portugal, the princely wooer was in something of a
quandary, for composition in the French tongue was

* He is usually referred to by modem writers as Leodius, but in
English letters of the day he appears as ‘ Mr. Hubert (or Hubertus)
Thomas,’ Secretary to the ‘ Countye Palantyne.’

241 16

242 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

at no time a light matter to him. He therefore sum-
moned to his aid Hubertus, the clerk of Lifege, at the
moment toiling in the service of the Elector Ludwig,
and in so doing entertained unawares an annalist of
considerable efficiency. Nor did this efficiency remain
long unrecognised. To both men, indeed, it was the
opportunity of a lifetime, and they grasped it. Here
was the prince for whom Hubertus’ ready pen was
waiting, and here was the scribe who alone had been
lacking to fulfil the life of Frederick. So from this
time onwards the historiographer spent the most of
his life and of his strength either in the company of
his master or in the furtherance and disentanglement
of this prince’s sorely involved affairs. And as the
Palsgrave was a man not only of European reputation,
but also (so to speak) of a European career, he was
thrown into contact with many of the greatest figures
of that great age, the first half of the sixteenth century.

Despite his life of activity, Hubertus composed
several historical works. These include a life of
Franz von Sickingen and a history of the Peasants’
War, and they have all, especially of recent years,
been freely used and quoted by students of the period.
He was also in the habit, as he tells us himself,^ of
filling up the spare moments of his joumeyings by the
composition of small treatises, which he would write
on the corner of some rough kitchen table, while the
horses were being rubbed down in the stables and his
dinner was frizzling on the fire. But the masterpiece
of the ‘ pithie and worthie ’ Netherlander is without
doubt the biography of his patron and friend, and it
is as the author of these diverting Annals that his
name is best known in the country of his adoption.

As a writer, the chief merits of Hubertus Thomas
are candour and fluency. Open of heart and honest
of purpose, he narrates with a garrulous and not
unimpressive simplicity, devoid of artifice but by no
means of art, all that befell his master and himself
^ See Preface to the treatise De Tungris et Eburonibus.

INTRODUCTORY 243

both at home in the spacious hunting-lands of the
Palatinate and abroad in the scheming courts of
Western Europe. ‘ If you have not learned anything
remarkable from this history,’ he writes at the close
of his labours, ‘you have yet thereby come to know
the truth.’ And assuredly his perfect acquaintance,
not only with the deeds but with the intimate hopes
and disappointments of his princely patron, joined to
the many brilliant side-lights which he casts upon the
policies and diplomacies of the day, entitle him to a
distinguished place among the historians of his century.
The biography was composed, it is true, many years
after the events recorded had taken place. Moreover,
even supposing his memory to have been irreproach-
able, the annalist was not personally acquainted with
the doings of the Palsgrave till the first bright romance
of this hero was already overpast. Yet, even with
regard to his presentment — ^which an eminent German
critic has cruelly stigmatised as far too romantic * — of
this charming and unusual episode, it may be urged
that such intimate details can scarcely have been
obtained from any less trustworthy a source than the
Coimt Palatine himself; while a careful examination
of the few documents which, by a curious chance, have
been preserved in the fonds de Simancas of the Paris
archives,® has revealed an unexpected agreement on
all points likely to have become matter of general
knowledge.

In his official career, however, candour was not the
virtue on which Hubertus prided himself. In fact,
bis dearest arrogance was founded on a firm belief
in his own diplomatic ability. ‘ 1 ever knew,’ he
declares, ‘ how to expound and extenuate all things ’
— in a word, to make the worse appear the better
reason. And he would have us to realise in no un-

* ‘ Der sehr romantischen Schilderung dieses Vorfells, welche
Hitbertus Thomas Leodius in seinen bekannten Annalen des Pfalz-
grafen g^bt, darf man nicbt zu sehr trauen.’ (Baumgarten, bd. i.)

* Cf. Moeller, ^leonore d’Auiricke et de Bourgogne.

544 THE ADVENTURES OE A PALSGRAVE

certain manner the natural eloquence with which he
was wont, on his master's behalf, to soften the hearts
and open the purses of emperors and kings. When
it seemed meet and advisable and the surroundings
were propitious, he could pronounce a lengthy oration,
interspersed with learned and classical allusions ; but,
if his audience appeared unsympathetic or impatient,
he was able, without loss of dignity, to hasten instantly
to his point, ‘ making no long German business of the
affair.’ ‘ At times he bemoans himself that others reap
the benefit of his brains. Thus in the Italian embassy
of 1530, his colleague, Hartmann von Eppingen, the
learned jurist of Heidelberg, delivered a speech which
Granvelle himself ‘ could not sufficiently praise,’ pre-
ferring it to the many that he had heard in Italy, for
that it was so ‘brief and well expounded, compre-
hensive and decorous.’ The Chancellor even asked for
a transcript of the oration, and ‘ Doctor Hartmannus,’ .
relates the annalist sadly, gained much fame thereby.
Yet it was Hubertus who, seeing that his friend ‘had
never had the leisure to perfect himself in the art of
speech,’ had privily composed for him this happy
effort. Generosity forbade disclosure, ‘and to Hart-
mannus a silken dress was presented, but I, who had
made the speech, received but a flick upon the fore-
head.’

Hubertus’ knowledge of languages and the classics
was also a source of legitimate pride to him, and, in
the true spirit of the Renaissance, he delighted to
broider the dull tissues of life with constant allusions
to his favourite authors. Whether it be in the heats
of Southern France, where he meditates upon the
ignorance of Pliny concerning strawberries and the
strange virtues of fern-leaves ; or in the snows of
Spain, where he recalls the experiences of Xenophon ;
or in the horrors of the sack of Schweinfurt, which he

‘ ‘ They use long Orations which with much teadiousnes they
adome with many old Apothegms of great and learned men.'
{Shakespeare s Ettrope.')

INTRODUCTORY 24s

likens, as did Melanchthon, to the siege of Troy, he
is seldom at a loss for a suitable comparison. And
perhaps the happiest moment of his life was when
privileged to listen to the learned and fascinating
conversation of the incomparable ‘first Francis of
France.’

In some ways, indeed, this burgher son of Lifege
was in advance of many more distinguished con-
temporaries, and in an age when the most brilliant
minds of the Renaissance were not untouched by
strange faiths and illusions, he maintained an attitude
of polite but immoveable incredulity. He believed, it
is true — with Machiavelli and Benvenuto Cellini — in
the influence of the stars upon human destinies, and
he read, like many of his betters, the wild portents of
the skies. But the less reputable superstitions left
him unruffled. Thus on one occasion, when journey-
ing homewards across a mountain of the Pyrenees
known by the sinister name of ‘ Perdu,’ he came upon
a monk in a blue gown. His comrade Marnold
instantly grew paler than box-wood,^ and, grasping
his sword, exclaimed : * I must kill this monk, or, from
seeing him, we shall fall into uttermost woe.’ The
friar of ill omen prudently fled up the mountain,
but, when his accuser would have urged hotly after,
Hubertus clutched this worthy firmly by the cloak.
In vain did Marnold explain that unless the seemingly
harmless religious were at once dispatched to another
world they would surely all break their necks,
since never was it possible to meet such a person
without evil ensuing therefrom. His captor would
not release him, and they pursued their journey,
Marnold growing more and more uneasy as they
neared the perilous and robber-haunted French frontier,
and Hubertus lecturing him on his fears and blood-
thirstiness, and, ‘ bywords and example, refuting him.
It chanced, in effect, that on crossing the mountain

* ‘ Bnxo pallidior.’ Hubertus was presmoal^ quoting Ovid’s ‘<Ha
uxo pallidiora,’ or ‘ buxoque similliinus pallor.’

246 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

they were overtaken by the deepest snow ever known
in those parts; were forced to perform the whole
journey on foot; and when at length safely arrived in
a village, could no more stand but only fall half-dead
upon their beds. Marnold, of course, laid all the blame
on his comrade for having restrained him from killing
the brewer of ill-luck. But Hubertus remained unper-
turbed.

Besides these very serviceable tastes and abilities,
the annalist was possessed of another — ^less shining
yet even more admirable — quality which must by no
means be omitted. This was the unusual capacity for
loyalty and self-sacrifice that formed the driving power
of his busy, unresting life. His devotion to his master
was indeed remarkable. At any moment of the day
or night he would abandon for his service the joys of
home and that comfortable little house in the Leier-
gasse, which, though of scanty dimensions as befitted
his income, was, as he touchingly observes, ever ‘ clean
and neat and therefore only the more cheerful.’ On
his first summons from Frederick he left his young
wife in the ‘hardest and coldest depths of winter,
being in childbed, among total strangers, with only
a serving-maid of scarce ten years.’ And although he
left her with so much money that his own little store
could barely take him to his destination— although ‘ I
could be of good courage,’ he asserts, ‘ since it was my
profession,’— yet it was with a heavy heart that he
set out. Nor, after many years of strenuous service,
had his loyalty abated. On the Palsgrave’s last
journey through Europe he still, though with infinite
reluctance, decided to accompany him. ‘And verily
I feared for my wife and child, not knowing if I should
see them again before two years had passed, or
perchance even for the span of my life ; and it was
but from the faith that I owed to my master that,
despite their bowlings and shriekings, I set forth.’
For ‘I was sorely moved,’ he adds, ‘by the misery
wherein my good lord and his lady had fallen, and

INTRODUCTORY 247

I settled to fare forth with them, were it even to the
end of the world.'

As a fact the wife of Hubertus must have passed
a life of considerable loneliness and anxiety, for her
husband’s absences were constant and prolonged.
After one journey Hubertus returned to find that three
of his children ‘ would not know him : for that two had
at my departure been small and had now forgotten me,
while the third had but half a year later come into the
world.’ On another occasion — that of the Palsgrave's
impetuous entry into Spires on a common go-cart —
the good lady was ‘ utterly terrified ’ by the announce-
ment of her husband’s death. A neighbour, who had
witnessed the apparently humiliating episode, hastened
to paint the matter for her in the blackest colours.
* She said that she hoped to see me shortly, but he
replied ; O dear woman, your hopes are vain. The
Palsgrave arrived yesterday in Spires, tattered and
poverty-stricken, having for many nights fed upon
roots in the woods, and being but with difficulty
escaped from the hands of the King of France; his
people are all imprisoned, thrown into evil dungeons
and most of them already dead.’ And she wept with
her children — ^Anna Camilla and Adrian Pallantes,
‘ whom his grandmother still led by the hand ’ — until
a letter from the missing one arrived to contradict
the tale.

In middle life, despite the unwavering loyalty of
Hubertus to his master, a melancholy rift appeared
between them. For, from the time of Frederick’s
accession to the Electorate, when from a pauper
Palsgrave he was raised to the dignity of premier
Prince of the Empire, he became estranged from his
faithful secretary, no longer using his services or
entrusting him with his plans. ‘ He held me,’ writes
Hubertus gently, ‘ of too small account to transact the
weighty matters which daily came for decision before
the Electoral Council,’ while he ever wished to have
about him new and youthful councillors'. Moreover,

248 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

old Thomas had many enviers among the courtiers,
whose evil minds and tongues made the infamous sug-
gestion that the secrets of a country should never be
entrusted to a foreigner. Yet, though Hubertus was
delegated to an unimportant post, his enemies were
not wholly triumphant, since the prince would still
often ‘ whisper in my ear, take me with him a-hunting,
laugh and talk with me kindly.’ Nor does it appear,
from a study of his actions as Elector Palatine of the
Rhine, that Frederick II. gained in any degree by his
change of advisers.

THE ADVENTURES OF A
PALSGRAVE

Of dropping buckets into empty weHs,

And growing old in drawing nothing up.

CowPER.

The wind blew stark from the south and the dog-star,
portent as well of great dignities as of great distresses,
was climbing the sky, when the Palsgrave Frederick *
was bom. The year was 1483, the month December,
the place the Castle of Winzigen near Neustadt on the
Hardt, whither his mother — a princess of the Bavaiia-
Landshut house — ^had fled to escape the prevailing
pestilence. The infant was named Frederick, maybe
(writes the chronicler) after his great-uncle Frederick
the Victorious; maybe after one of his godfathers
likewise so called; or maybe, and what more likely,
according to that excellent precept of Plato which
holds that all mighty and valorous heroes receive their
names, not by some cheap and hasty chance, but
immediately from God, who thus discloses their inti-
mate nature and being ? And verily, throughout his
life, this Frederick justified his title, ever seeking
peace and ensuing it.

> T atfr the Elector Palatine Frederick II. or ‘ the Wise.’ He was
the fourth son of the Elector Palatine PhiUp ‘the Upright,’ and die
great-nephew of Frederick foe Victorkws.

250 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

He was but the fourth son of his parents, yet in wits
and parts surpassed both elder and younger brothers,
his ‘ love-worthy ’ ways winning the favour of all men.
Never was he stubborn or rebellious against his
teachers, save when admonished unduly with blows
and threatening words. And if he then retorted with
a certain vehemence, ‘ I hold this,’ says Hubertus, ‘ but
as a sign of his valorous temper.’ Indeed, the scribe
has throughout more sympathy with the pupils than
with the pedagogues. ‘ Nor can I approve the school-
masters of the day, for they bore themselves as tyrants
towards the boys, alarmed them with rods and lashes,
and with a terrible voice sought to force from them
what even their elders could neither grasp nor fathom.
They were fain to drive — ^not to improve — the yoimg
folk.’ This the Palsgrave himself often lamented when
he came to riper years, ‘ doubting not that had he
had such a teacher as Horace and Quinctilian describe,
the acquisition of knowledge, and therewithal of the
Latin tongue, would have been an easy matter to his
good head.’ ^ For he ever loved the company of the
learned, and went gladly with them. The matter
seems the more regrettable that, from the year 1497,
the famous Johann Reuchlin was appointed ‘chief
taskmaster ’ to the Palatine children, while the Court
of Heidelberg was the constant shelter of the most
eminent humanists of the day. But Grermany was
conservative on the subject of education, and the
maxim of Solomon was still responsible for many a
howling German boy.®

Another drawback to Frederick’s comfort in these

* In this he resembled his ancestor ; for when the Emperpt
Charles IV. complained that none of his princes knew any Latb,
* Lodovicke, the Elector Palatine, tooke such a deep disdaine m
hknselfe, that with teares ashamed, he much lamented his want ef
learning ; and presently hereupon returning home, began (albeit he
was very old) to learne his Latine tongue. Eberhard also, the first
Duke of Wirtenberg ... in a rage strooke his Tutor or Governor
... for not applying him to his Booke when he was young.*
(Peacham^s Compleat Gentleman^ 1634.)

* See Illustrative Notes, 41.

YOUTH AT HEIDELBERG 251

early years was the rigid frugality that distinguished
the Court of Philip the Upright. No detail was too
small and no economy too petty for the parsimonious
attention of this prince. The eggs were counted, the
salt was weighed, the fragments of the joints were
gathered together ; the lids of the pewter vessels were
carefully inspected lest any drops of their precious
contents should escape ; while such ladies of the Court
as were, fortunately for the Electoral exchequer, in a
condition to warrant the deprivation, were sternly
denied the luxury of pepper. The young princes
themselves suffered to a lamentable degree, especially
in their wardrobes. The court tailor, whose duty it
was to see to their clean linen and restore their
clothes, received but the paltry sum of eight to ten
florins a year to stimulate his zeal. Moreover, even
when permitted to supply the new apparel of which
they were sorely in need, he was admonished, in no
uncertain tone, that such raiment must first ‘with
industry and deliberation be measured, thereafter
cunningly carved and fashioned to the required shape ; ’
and where possible nothing was to be cut to waste.*
Small wonder was it that in his first years of free-
dom Frederick felt it incumbent upon him to assert,
even to excess, the right of a Palsgrave to decorous
adornment.

As a boy of eighteen, being then ‘ not especially tall
but of a somewhat thick-set body, with strong and
sinewy limbs, an excellent rider and practised in all
knightly arts,’ Frederick was sent to the Netherlands,
to learn foreign tongues and manners at the Court of
the Archduke Philip the Handsome.* And it was in
the train of this giddy and frivolous sovereign, himself
Iwit twenty-three years of age, that his varied fortunes
have their beginning.

It was the year following the birth of the future
Emperor Charles V. Four tragic deaths — of J uan, only

* ElecUaa! accounts given in Htosser, rvL i.

* Soa of the Emperor Maximilian I.

252 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

son of ‘the Catholic Kings,' and of his posthumous
infant ; of the Queen of Portugal, their eldest daughter,
and of her baby Miguel— had opened the road to the
united thrones of Castile and Aragon. And, in tardy
compliance with the urgent summonings of Ferdinand
and Isabella, the Archduke and his wife were about to
visit their kingdom to be.

Their adventures were such as befitted their rank
and (not infrequently) their recklessness ; since neither
Philip the Fair nor Juana the Foolish was famed for
discretion, nor as yet had the Palsgrave Frederick
developed even that measure of good sense which
later earned for him the title of ‘ the Wise.’ Indeed,
at the very outset of the enterprise Philip perpetrated
what, in the eyes of his father-in-law, was a political
blunder of the first magnitude. For not only did he
insist on travelling southwards through the heart of
France, and on ratifjdng the betrothal of his one-year-
old son to the heiress of the hereditary enemy of
Austria and Spain ; but also, no sooner had he arrived
in Paris than he visited ‘ the council in the Parliament,’
with its President and its hundred members all clad in
purple cloth, and acknowledged his vassalage to the
French King by taking his seat as Peer of France and
Earl of Flanders. This confession of inferiority sorely
hurt the pride of the Spaniards, and they dwelt with
relief on the refusal of Juana to take part in the cere-
mony. Philip, however, suffered no doubts or com-
punctions, and passed gaily on his way.

The princes found Louis XII., gouty but gorgeous,
at Blois, with his Queen, Anne of Brittany, and their
two-year-old baby, the Princess Claude, who, when h«-
prospective father-in-law sought to salute her, let out
so lusty a howl that all ceremonies were instantly at
an end. So here they stayed for a week, gambling for
thousands of crowns at a game of cards called ‘ fluere,’^
and hunting stags in the forest at force'.* a gayer but

' French ‘flux’ : flush. ‘ Flusse ’ is first in the list of the games of
Gargantua.

* See Illustrative Notes^ 42.

royal Progress 253

more troublesome method, 533^3 Hubertus, than the
German custom of toils and spears. When the
weather was inclement they played at tennis, a
diversion ‘which both sovereigns well understood,’ '
or practised knightly feats of arms ‘ all accoutred in
cassocks and housings of gold.’ And now were sown
the seeds of a generous extravagance that was later to
empty the coffers of the Palatinate. To crown the
festivities there was published, to the great wrath of
Ferdinand, the treaty of peace between Maximilian and
Louis, and the royal confessor preached an eloquent
sermon on the appropriate words, ‘ Ecce quam bonum
et quam jucundum est habitare reges et principes in
unum.’*

At the frontier of Spain the travellers were welcomed
by a richly furnished concourse of nobles, who pro-
claimed by the glory of their trappings that they were
the proper ambassadors of the Catholic kings. For
not every Castilian, says Hubertus, might be clad at
his pleasure in garments of gold or silk: 'seeing
that these arrogant lords would ever strive to out-
do each other in splendour, and thereby either fall
into extremest poverty or neglect the practice of
arms.’ Queen Isabella, with a better discernment
than Henry VIII.,* had remarked with vexation that
her nobles and gentlemen were in the habit of attend-
ing her upon mules, and of sacrificing not only their
estates, but also — what was far more important to the
grandeur of Spain — ^their stables for the better adorn-
ment of their persons; and she had therefore issued
an edict ordaining that nor man nor woman should
wear silk of any description, unless the husband also
maintained a charger. The result of this ingenious
device was amazing, for every woman instantly strove
to the utmost to procure her husband a horse, and

^ See Illostrative Notes, 43.

* Antoine de Lalaing. This chronicler gives a very full accotmt
oi the jmxmey, which I ^ve used to supplement that of Hubertus.

* Ccanpare the story of the English earl in TJke Sermn^-fm^s
C&mfort^ 1598, cited in Pro£ W. Raleigh’s

254 the adventures OF A FALSGRAVE

the Queen quickly found forty or fifty thousand fine
horses at her disposal^

It was with a goodly accompaniment, therefore, that
Philip and Frederick progressed through the cities of
Northern Spain. The country, indeed, was as sorry
and unfruitful as in the days of Rozmital, and provided
food for neither horse nor man. ‘ But how,’ exclaims
Hubertus, ‘ doth custom leaven us ! We Germans think
that all is at an end if we may not overfill our-
selves daily four or five times with meat and drink,
and cram our horses with oats, hay and chaff till
they can scarcely pant.’ Yet the Spanish steeds were
but the swifter, stouter and more enduring for their
life of starvation.® None the less (‘ and this is a matter
worthy of remembrance ’) a member of the Archduke’s
retinue, the Sire de Boussut, was the first visitor of
sufficient hardihood to cross the mountains in a
wheeled vehicle. And the peasants, ‘ who had never
seen a chariot in the country in all their days, were as
amazed as never was.’

Once over the Pyrenees, the progress was a triumph.
In every town and village, to the princes’ great amuse-
ment, there came to meet them maidens and young
women with shaven heads, ‘ who cried aloud in their
most strange tongue, “We are of even as noble a race
as the King himself. As thou art an honourable and
noble lord, give us somewhat wherewith we may
have a dance and hold a holiday.’” Everywhere,
too, there was a buffoon, who proclaimed Philip’s
riches, deeds, possessions and ‘whatever else might
serve his fame.’ And everywhere there were nobles
mounted on swift and light horses, who, at his
approach, would instantly divide themselves into two
bands and hurl reed-spears at one another. ‘It
is good,’ says Hubertus, ‘ to see how skilfully they
school their horses, and how marvellous high they

^ On this occasion, says Mariana, ‘ the more to express the pnblick
joy, leave was given that such as might wear silk doublets might also
have silk coats, and coloured, which shows the modesty of those times,*

* See Illustrative Notes, 44,

ROYAL PROGRESS 255

cast these specially prepared spears. Whoso hath
touched the most, and the best managed his horse,
will be honoured of the ladies and bear off the prize,
whereby the Spaniards, who hold much to women,
lay great store.’

The great cities vied with one another in their
greetings. Burgos, ‘golden, gay and garlanded,’ re-
joiced their hearts with bull-fights, hawking parties,
and games of tennis played ‘ with large balls after the
fashion of Spain.’ Valladolid informed their minds by
a sight of its two newly built and curiously carved
colleges, furnished with libraries and scholars, * well-
ordered, abundant and grave.’ ^ Medina del Campo, the
dismal city of dirt,* enlivened their spirits with the joys
of its annual fair, to the especial delight of Philip, who,
disguised as a Spaniard in a false wig, ‘ pervaded the
feast.’ And Madrid, entertaining them throughout
Eastertide in its new and ‘very beautiful’ castle,
^propriately depressed and mortified their souls by
die frenzied spectacle of its inhabitants, ‘ who went
about the city all naked, beating themselves with
scourges all the day.’* As for the splendour of the
state entry into the capital of Castile, it surpassed the
unsurpassable, and the chroniclers are at a loss which
most to extol : the magnificence of the procession or
the beauty of * the many lovely ladies who trimmed
and burnished (poUissoienf) the windows.’

The first days of the Archduke’s sojourn in Toledo
were darkened by the death of Arthur, Prince of
Wales, the first husband of Catherine of Aragon.
This was a sore blow to the careful schemes of her
father, and warimmediately broke out again with France.
The whole Court was also thrown into mourning, and

* See lUustratiye Notes, 45.

* ‘This towne, to my judgment, hath neither grotmde nor heaven ;
fix the heavens are always covered with cloudes, and the grounde
nth dyrte, in such wise that if the neighbourhood call it Medina of
tin &M, wee courtiers doe tenne it Medina of the dyrte. It hath a
nver diat is so deepe and dangerous, that geese in summer go over it
diy-ifooted.’ (Guevara’s Letters^

* See Illustrative Notes, 46.

256 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

did not stir from the private apartments for the space
of nine days. ‘ For as Solomon saith in the thirteenth
of his Proverbs, “ the end of mirth is heaviness.” ’

But this melancholy mood soon passed, and— for
Philip and Frederick at least — ^the tide of merriment
flowed again. Reed-toumeys ^ and bull-fights took
place incessantly, while three times a week the Arch-
duke and the Palsgrave went a-hawking, rising early
and remaining in the saddle all day. King Ferdinand
had a passion for this sport, and was in the habit
of taking out with him as many as 120 falconers
and birds, of which he himself handled always the
greater part. Every description of quarry — kites,
herons, partridges and what not — ^was welcomed by
him, and the more hawks were fl3nng at a time the
better he was pleased; though his Spanish dignity
never permitted either himself or his courtiers to go
out of a foot’s pace, ‘ how fine soever the game they
discern.’ The visitors, however, did not adhere rigidly
to these royal practices, but galloped after the birds
on well-schooled coursers, the while ‘ cold meats were
carried after them on donkeys.’ There were always,
adds Hubertus, so many falcons in the air and so
many swift hounds upon the ground, that it was barety
possible for any heron to escape ; and they often
captured more than a himdred birds.

Many, too, were the royal jousts that were celebrated
in the great market-place, where all the nobles of the
court and city gathered, each with a train of a dozen
lackeys or more, apparelled in their master’s colours.
At one such tilting the prizes consisted of ‘four
hundred pairs of the gloves of Ocafta ’ ; but as all the
combatants imfortunately lost their lances and fell to
the ground, the rewards had to be distributed among

* ‘ It hath at first the appearance of a martial exercise ; the horses
are very beautiful and well adorned ; the men richly clad, and nrast
be good horsemen,' otherwise they could not conduct the qracfe
motions and turns of their horses ; all the rest is too childish, tirii
darts being nothing else but plain bulrushes of the biggest graw^’
(Clarendon.)

THE COURT OF CASTILE 25;

the ladies. When the entertainments were at an end
the champions perambulated the town, still armed at
all points as for the joust, save only for the helmet
which their esquires carried before them. The lackeys
followed, bearing torches and the broken lances, and
proclaiming their master’s achievements. And thus,
‘ having run courses all the day, they roam all the
night about the city, and pass before their ladies at
the windows. And they do this to the end that these
may see them, for it is impossible for them to converse :
for mostly they are shut up in their chambers, and go
not forth unless the King and Queen are making feast ;
the which befalls perchance three or four times only
in the year.’

Much pity need not, however, be wasted upon these
Dulcineas of Toledo, for on the few occasions when
they mixed with the world they hastened to make up
for lost time, atoning by a concentrated brilliancy for
the brief and evanescent character of their public
appearances, and condensing the legitimate joys of
weeks into the crowded hours of one swift sweet
supper. At a feast given in the Castle, the Flemish
chronicler observed the female guests with interest.
‘And I beheld one of the loveliest of the damosels
content three of these gentlemen, who throughout
this supper, lasting from two to three hours,
remained her servitors. And she spake for full an
hour and a half with the one, who was on his knees,
with head bare, for the said space of time; to the
second, she spake for a quarter of an hour, and to
the third for a good hour. She parleyed with one,
she gave ceillads * (bailloit des ceillades) to another, and
she had her hand on the shoulder of the third. And
thus she satisfied all three; for, seeing that they do
not behold them often, they are as content with looking
upon their ladies with love as in other countries with
speaking. One of our retinue asked her, after supper,
bow she could thus treat these gentlemen who wished

‘ ‘ Gave strange oeiUads and most ^peaking looks.’ {King Lear^

258 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

her so well. And she replied, “ We take our pleasure,
so long as we are yet to be married, in treating them
thus ; for when we are married they imprison us in
their castles. Thus are they well avenged for the
goodly time that we have had before marrying.’*’ ’ ^

This life of pleasure was exactly suited to the tastes
of Frederick, and the thinness of his purse alone
marred his content. His master, indeed, held in no
small degree to the lustre of life, and the wardrobe
of the impoverished Palatine was in consequence often
sorely strained. Thus, at the anniversary of the
taking of Granada, celebrated by the Catholic Kings
‘with joy and splendour,’ he was sorely put to it for
the materials of a proper pomp. The noble combatants
assembled on the field to the number of three or four
thousand, arrayed with marvellous magnificence of
golden broideries and blazonings, and wearing on their
arms jewelled ribands of great price. Now the Pals-
grave had industriously acquired the Spanish method
of riding ‘ a la gineta,’ and in this matter was well able
to hold his own. But the acquisition of suitable bra-
veries for the occasion, and, above all, of the requisite
gems for the adorning of the arm, proved a far graver
care. Yet even in this he showed himself an accom-
plished craftsman, and by the aid of judicious borrow-
ing shone forth in jewels of such surpassing splendour
and worth that none other could attain unto him.
Whence ‘ the Spaniards exalted him to the stars, and
extolled him as the richest and most dexterous of all.'

The Archduke Philip, however, by no means shared

^ According to other authorities even the married ladies of Castile
were not without their diversions. Laurent Vital, indeed, maintains
that they were so greatly cherished by * all gentlemen ^ that they were
‘ well helped in their businesses.’ ‘ I have fortunately seen many good
husbands, marvellous rejoiced to see their wives decked, gildec^
tricked out, painted and shining, mounted on their high p^tofles,
and the husband leading her with one hand and with the other
carrying and supporting her arm, for fear lest she should make a Mae
step.’ If for any hindrance the husband cannot escort his wife, *
k>rd the young chaplain, with his firesh countenance, leads her every-
whare, whether about the country or in the town ’ ; which venerahle
custom affords the writer food for many diverting reflections.

THE COURT OF CASTILE 259

his young friend’s enthusiasm for things Spanish, and
Toledo very literally stank in his nostrils. His
sojourn occupied the entire summer and autumn of
the year 1502, and his northern constitution seems to
have suffered in consequence. Often, therefore,
‘ feeling feeble and oppressed by the great heats and
very stinking vapours of the city,’ ^ he would ride out
with his attendants to seek the healthier and more
pleasant air of the country-sides. Now they would
betake them to eat in monasteries situated on the high
and lovely hills. Now they would rest in cool and
shadowy orchards, bedecked with fountains (‘ fair and
clear, well paved and well accoutred’), odoriferous
‘with lemons and with oranges, with pomegranates
and with other fruiting trees.’ Now they would visit
a village garden in the valley, gay with many shrubs
and herbs, ‘ lively with conies and with birds of many
divers sorts of colours.* Or, again, they would banquet
in the many mansions of the Spanish nobility, feasting
on sweetmeats and comfits, amid goodly tapestries and
vessels of gold, returning so overloaded with ‘wine,
flesh, fish and fodder for the horses,’ that the most of
the spoil must needs be abandoned on their home-
ward way. Indeed, the Archduke’s heart was often
comforted with curious gifts : as, for instance, one of a
beautifully proportioned ostrich; one of ‘a dog all
black with never a hair on him, and having a muzzle
like unto that of a Moor’; and another of a green
parrot, ‘ no bigger than a sparrow, talking better than
it is possible to believe.’

But nothing availed to soothe the restless impatience
of Philip. The stately ceremonial of the Spanish
Court was wearisome to him, and he longed for the
freer fashions of his Flemish lands. So no sooner had
Juana’s heirship been acknowledged with due splen-
dour, both in Castile and in Aragon, than he deter-

* Havagero describes the bouses and palaces of Toledo as fine and
coiamodiouSy but without view or outlook of even the meanest sort i-
*tbe most of their rooms have no other light than that of the door.*

26 o the adventures of a palsgrave

mined, despite the unsatisfactory condition of his wife,
to start for home.

In truth, poor Juana la Loca makes but a sorry show
in these her years (that should be) of splendour and
success. She was to give birth within a few weeks to
the future Emperor Ferdinand, and the first signs of
her madness were already causing anxiety to those
about her, especially to that great mother whose own
days on earth were drawing to their close. ‘She
bore herself,’ writes Antoine de Lalaing only a
little later, ‘ as a woman desperate and all filled with
jealousy, which could by no means be quenched.’ It
seemed to her that her husband was so incomparably
fair and desirable, that all who beheld must covet him,
whilst all whom he beheld he must covet; and so great
was her ardour of love and frenzy of hate^ that she
found no joy in the world, and did but long for death.
Nor perhaps, adds Antoine diplomatically, was she
wholly unreasonable, for Philip was ‘comely, young
and singularly well-nourished,’ consorting greatly with
young company and young counsellors, who often re-
galed him with talk and presents of lovely damsels, and
led him into dissolute places, whereof descriptions were
given to her, ‘ often perchance far worse than the facts.’

In any case, when December arrived, the Archduke,
pleading urgent affairs, insisted on departing for his
northern dominions, and abandoned the reluctant Juana
to the care of her equally reluctant parents.*

^ ‘ Finally, she took to dismissing the ladies of her household, and so
contrived that she remained more alone than any woman in the
world, save for one washer-woman only, who now and again, and at
the hours that pleased her, washed her linen in her presence. And
in this state, alone and without company of women, she bore herself
with her husband, attending to her needs and serving herself even
like a poor slave , and thus did she go with her husband into the
country, one woman alone in the company of ten or even twenty
thousand men, the which was a thing very unreasonable, to see a
lady and queen of so many fair and fine kingdoms without a retinue
of women.’ (De Lalaing.)

* ‘She does not lift her eyes from the earth. Riches, power,
dominion, her parents even, are naught to her. With cloudy brow,
she thinks only of her lord. He alone is her passion and her
(Peter Martyr, Episiol(z,)

SPANISH DIVERSIONS 261

Gay and untrammelled, Philip and Frederick started
off, and, since they quickly cast decorum to the winds,
they soon discovered possibilities of entertainment in
even so dismal a venture as a journey through Spain.
The dances of the Moors were their greatest delight,
‘many fine bodies of each sex gambolling before
them ’ ; and, amongst others, ‘ Monseigneur had special
regrets about two or three beautiful maidens, and
promised them great advantages if they would but
become Christians ; to which, however, he could not,
whether by money or prayers, incline them.’ Some-
times the Spanish ladies themselves unbent so far as
to join in the revels, clad so gaily in cloth of gold and
snapping their fingers so alluringly, that they ‘ seemed
more like goddesses than mortals and could have
moved stones to love.’ Many, too, were the ‘lovely
mysteries’ provided for them, and Hubertus dwells
with vivid appreciation on a pitched battle which took
place, for their edification, between the inhabitants of
Heaven and Hell, when the army of Paradise stormed
the lower regions with magnificent success. The
great cannon with which the angels and devils be-
laboured one another, though only fashioned of
paper (ex papyro) gave out such a crashing and
crackling, and vomited forth so many tens of thousands
of rockets, that the spectators thought no otherwise
than that they were real pieces. ‘ And verily, all things
seemed on fire.’ To complete the illusion, Judas
Iscariot, with a couple of congenial friends, stood at
the summit of Hell — ‘ which was as well builded as it
is possible to imagine ’ — and at the crucial moment
suddenly exploded, making an uproar as of two or
three thousand culverins all loosed at a time. When
the cracklings ceased and the smoke passed from the
air, the entire scene had vanished away.

But the chief excitement of the journey occurred in
the splendid city of Barcelona, where Philip insisted
upon perambulating the streets after the fall of night
A day of rejoicing was to be crowned by an evening

262 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

of fireworks and illuminations. On the sea that

washes the walls of the town the great ships ^no less

than eighty royal galleys were all lit and adorned,
while in the market-place there had been erected an
immense star full of shots and rockets. All this the
Prince was ‘ more exceeding anxious to behold than
had ever been known of him,’ and he determined to
sally forth with his attendants, all mounted on mules.

But, at the hour appointed for the start, only
Frederick and his mule appeared, and Philip, enraged
at the delay, stormed angrily up and down the court-
yard. At last the Palsgrave, at his wits’ end, suggested
that both should bestride this lonely animal. The
proposal pleased Philip, so the two princes mounted
and rode in this sociable fashion about the streets;
‘gazing at all the comely women that were in the
windows.’ But disaster soon overtook them, for at the
very moment that they reached the market-place the
galleys loosed off their pieces with such lively energy
that it seemed as though the sea were ablaze with
sheer flame and would change its very nature, while
a rocket suddenly flew on a string up to the great
star and set it on fire : * whereupon there sprang from
out of it, to the distance of over one hundred paces,
innumerable burning and bursting missiles, even as
though it thundered.’

Now close to the star were standing not only the
princely mule with its double burden, 'but also the
missing household, who had just succeeded in finding
their master. And when the attendants’ mules heard
this gigantic crackling, they promptly ‘ ran from thence,
against the wills of their masters, caring for neither

^ Yet it was not till the seventeenth century, after many abortive
attempts, that Barcelona succeeded in constructing a port. *AII
would be perfect, had they but a harbour,’ says De Lalaing. Even
so he was amazed at the quantity of tall shipping that met his eyes.
Among the great galleys, ^twelve were made exceeding beautiful,
each one being estimated at 3,000 ducats before it was finished, and so
well equipped that it could by no means be improved.’ Navs^ro, in
1523, describes the Arsenal, ‘dove altre volte solevano aver
pumeto di galee^ ora non ne hapno alcun^’

SPANISH DIVERSIONS 263

stock nor stone.’ The Prince’s charger waited in
immoveable dignity until a rocket came and hit it on
the head, and even then, faithful to its distinguished
calling, it but ‘ turned itself about wheeling, and fled
round and round in a circle.’ This unusual motion,
however, was sufficient to dislodge Frederick, who
was the hindermost of the two cavaliers, and he fell
to the ground, dragging Philip along with him. ‘ And
there for a goodly while they stayed prone, nor were
they able, from their much laughing, to stand up.’

At last they gathered themselves together and looked
about for the retinue ; but as this had already stam-
peded, no help was there. The night was dark, and
they had no idea of their way home, so they hesitated
in some anxiety till the Palsgrave espied, not far off,
a building with gabies and a hospitable appearance.
Here they knocked and were admitted, to find an
assemblage of lovely, if inquisitive, ladies. The Pals-
grave gave out that they were both servants of the
Archduke, but ‘ the noble form and majestic counten-
ance’ of Philip caused some suspicion of the truth
of this statement The doubt, however, seems in
no way to have impeded the cheerfulness of the
occasion. When they had been nearly two hours in
the house the attendant lords arrived one after the
other, thanking God and all the saints for their salva-
tion, and telling that the mules were still running,
as though demented, about the town. The princes
answered with their own adventure, which caused the
most lively amusement, and then, as the mules never
reappeared, returned to their lodgings on foot.

At last the French frontier was reached : Philip’s
desires were realised, and he was quit of Spain. But
his position was not devoid of peril, for he was now in
a country with which his father-in-law was definitely
at war, and even he, feather-headed as he was, thought
it expedient to have hostages for his safety dispatched
to Ebnders. His reception in Lyons, where the
French Court was sojourning, was, however, of a most

264 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

reassuring character. Archbishops and dukes 'cara-
coled before him in pomp and triumph’; the streets
were filled with an innumerable and shouting people;’'
while at every corner Philip was harangued by men
or maidens counterfeiting ‘ Burning-Desire-for-Peace,’
‘ Public Weal,’ ‘ Right Counsel,’ ‘ Nobleness,’ or ‘Good
Will.’ On the bridge over the Sa6ne was a huge
flower-de-luce, from whose petals there sprang forth
healing water ; ‘ to the right, on an orange-tree filled
with oranges ; and to the left, on an apple-tree laden
with apples.’

Nor were these greetings wholly fantastical, since
concord and harmony were at the moment the desire
of all men’s hearts. The fitful and futile contest of
the Neapolitan succession was still wearily dragging.
The Treaty of Granada had failed of its purpose,
and the gay little pinnace of peace that had set sail
so buoyantly upon the summer waters of 1500 had
now for many months been floundering and founder-
ing in a new-sprung gale of war. The people of
France, who took no interest in the dispute, were
anxious for a peaceful settlement ; and this, as they
rightly conjectured, was the aim of the Archduke’s
visit. Both Louis and Philip, indeed, were still keenly
alive to the advantages of the suggested raarri^e
between the infants Charles and Claude, and the con-
sequent reconciliation of the rival claims. And a few
days after the entry, peace between the Kings of
France and of Spain was proclaimed in all the
thoroughfares of Lyons. The glad tidings were at
once dispatched to the lieutenants of the two Kings,
Gonsalvo da Cordova and the Due de Nemours.
Cordiality and good-fellowship obtained, and ‘ Bum-
ing-Desire-for-Peace ’ seemed justified of her children.

So Philip and Frederick were the heroes of the
hour. All men admired them, and all men praised.
Above all — for this in the eyes of both chroniclers
considered of pre-eminent importance — they were
I populace were rejoiced at his coming.* (Desrey.)

TRIUMPH AT LYONS 265

held as ‘ marvellous good jennetaries.' ' It was beauti-
ful,’ declares Lalaing, ‘ to see the Archduke, dressed in
a satin doublet of rose cramoisy, opening in Moorish
fashion, with a hood of grey brocade.’ ‘ It was wonder-
ful,’ exults old Thomas, with a yet worthier pride,
' to see the Palsgrave hurling his spear so high that
King Louis, amazed, exclaimed to the assembled
cardinals, lords and princes ; Behold what a German
can do ! ’ ‘ Even,’ he concludes vexedly, ‘ as though a
German were less skilful than others at this art.’
Philip, however, pursued by ill-fortune, soon sickened
of a fever that kept him a prisoner for two months in a
monastery on the Sadne, lying without the city. The
honours of the day fell, therefore, to Frederick alone,
and he made the most of them.

‘ The merry meadows ’ * were the scene of the
Palsgrave’s finest triumphs, for hither two or three
times a week came King Louis and his Anne to see the
young courtiers practise their feats and sports. ‘ Some
shot with the bow, others danced or ran in rivalry
with one another, some drove or cast great stones ;
and they neglected nothing that served for the
strengthening of the body or the winning of the ladies’
favour.’ This was Frederick’s golden opportunity,
and, when not in attendance on his lord, he was ever
to the fore And daily did he advance in the good
graces and estimation of the whole French Court.

In fact, to one person only was Frederick’s visit a
stumbling-block and rock of offence, and this was his
own elder brother, the Palsgrave Ludwig, also at this
time a visitor in Lyons. This prince had been sent by
his father to learn French at the Court of Louis XII.,
but he had shown little zeal in carrying out the wishes
of the Elector Palatine, avoiding all company and
living like a hermit among his own Germans. So

* Probably the famous ‘ prairie d’Esnay,* where, some twelve years
eaiiier, Charles VIII. and this same Qi^n Anne had delighted in the
escpldts q £ the thirteen-year-old ‘Picquet' on his *bas et bon petit
(Ckrmdffue de

266 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

when the King and Queen saw how different was
Palsgrave Frederick in his manner and habits, ‘ talka-
tive, ingratiating, companionable, and ever the most
dexterous in all knightly sports,’ they begged him to
induce his brother to be more like himself. Frederick
gladly assented, and, as a first step, invited Ludwig to
accompany him on a visit to the ladies of the Court,
forestalling the customary excuse by promising to act
as interpreter. But no sooner had they arrived than
the younger prince slipped away, and Ludwig, whether
he willed or not, must, to the ‘ vehement ’ amusement
of the Queen, ^ converse with them alone. On another
day he played the same trick with regard to Anne
herself. And at last, so pleased was the royal lady
with the diverting excursions whereby Frederick wiled
away the hours, that she begged Philip to take the
elder brother away with him and to leave her the
younger in his place. Hubertus is discreet over
Ludwig’s feelings in the matter.

Meanwhile the Archduke’s illness had been sorely
aggravated by the disturbing news of the death of the
Due de Nemours, and of the great victory which
Gonsalvo da Cordova had achieved at Cerignola.
Close upon this arrived an ambassador from Spain
repudiating the new-made treaty, and though Louis,
recognising the good-will of his guest, declined to
treat with the Spanish envoy, the incident caused
grave agitation. Philip, indeed, was now given up
by nearly all the royal physicians, to the number of
thirteen or fourteen. His retinue was in despair, and
his hosts also; for they feared an accusation of
poison, ‘the rumour whereof was already running
throughout his own country and the kingdom of
France.’ Thanks, however, to the kind offices of
Queen Anne, who came constantly with her ladies,
all mounted upon hackneys, ‘for the visitation and
recreation of Monseigneur,’ and relieved the dismal

* ‘ Reginam vehaneoter oblectavit.’

the recreations of MAXIMILIAN 267

hours with games of cherry-pit or spillikins, the
crisis was safely surmounted.^

When the invalid was sufficiently recovered he
travelled in a litter across Savoy and Burgundy, to
find the Emperor* at Innsbruck, and there now ensued
for both Philip and Frederick a period of diversion
that delighted their gay and irresponsible souls. For
Maximilian, though already leader of German human-
ism and a grandfather, was still in the prime and
pride of his romantic manhood. Brave, fantastic,
eager, a lover of beauty and a disciple of learning, he
was also the triumphant master of all knightly arts.
In this his favourite court of Innsbruck, his leisure
hours were passed in such sports and jousts as
required an unperturbed dexterity and courage, and
he could still outshine the best hunters and tilters of
the day. Philip and Frederick, therefore, habited a la
turquoise, now drank their fill of all manly exercises,
being treated, says Hubertus, to every kind of
spectacle likely to be comfortable to returned
travellers.

When barely rested from the fatigues of their
journey, they were taken by the Emperor to hunt the
chamois, a sport which, to the minds of the lowland
chroniclers, seemed fraught with incredible peril.
For these ' little wild goats of the mountains ' dwelt so
high that to reach them the hunters were forced to
have grapples of iron — huge and sharp, fashioned like
a St. Andrew’s cross — attached to their wrists and feet,
in their hands, too, they held pointed pikes, and, in
order to avoid falling, they must ever look at the spot
where they had securely fixed the pike, and so let
themselves slide to the bottom. ‘ And it is the most

* ‘Jouant k la laette.’ This, according to M. Gachard, mews the
'fcssette, expouitded by Cotgrave as ‘to play at Cherrie-pit (with
Bats).’ ^Cherry Pit is a play wherein they jMtch cherry-stones into a
Bttle hc^’ writes Brand. But Cotgrave himsetf interfaets ‘ luettes ' w
‘fittle btmdles of peeces of Ivork cast loose upon a talde ; the play is
te take up one vdthout shaking the rest, qt the taker iooseth.'

* ^trictl^ spea^n^, Maziinilian was of the Komans onl^.

268 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

dangerous thing in the world. To this hunting goeth
the King of the Romans, and he climbeth the rock as
well, yea, even better, than any of his hunters.’*
Bianca and her ladies also often took part ‘ like men,'
though they did not climb so rashly. Sometimes the
hunters were tempted to such terrible heights t-Hat
they could by no means come down again. ‘ And
when this is made known a priest is fetched, who
showeth them, so near as he may, the Body of Christ,
that they may remember their salvation, and die in the
true Catholic faith : for there is no other remedy.’

Sometimes the royal party went out after bears, a
sport no less artful and perilous.* For the bears loved
heights and precipices, and when a brute was at bay
and on his hind-legs, the hunter must needs be sure
and sudden, and strike with his spear at the very
heart. If he missed, the bear would ‘ push him from
the top of the rock to the bottom ’ ; but this seldom
happened, for the hunters knew their business.

The visit to Innsbruck was also enlivened by the
wedding of a lady, charmingly named Apollonia, of
whom the Archduke himself had once been an admirer.
The nuptials had been postponed till his arrival, it
being naturally considered that ‘ the presence of her
once loving subject. King Philip, would lend a greater
consequence thereunto.’ And they now took place
with infinite states and ceremonies : with high Masses,
chanted by the Emperor’s choristers to the tones of the

^ ‘ We go to hunt chamois to-morrow/ writes Maximilian to the
Archduke Sigismund. ^ God grant that we may slay one with our own
hand. We have for long borne especial rancour against these wild
animals/ (Prtvaifdrze/e.) See also Maximilian’s Jagdbuch (ed, Mayr,
Innsbruck, 1901), and the accounts of his adventures in Teuerdanik,
His chief exploit was the planting of a crucifix on the Martinswand,
and Beatis describes the cave in the face of the precipice, 50 or 60
paces high, ^ where the emperor with his own hand placed the crc^’
Montaigne also saw the sacred emblem — *en un lieu ou il est im-
possible que nul home soit ale sans artifice de quelques cordes, par oi
u se soit devald d’en haut/

* * We are to have a hunt of those savage monsters {widen wurmmi
called black bears {dy sbarzen peered^ \ theye are many her^a^bouts,^
(Letter oH Ma^milian, 1490.)

INNSBRUCK ^69

great organ,* ‘ the most beautiful and exquisite that
ever I have seen’; with jousts in the manner of
Germany, both with blurred spears and with sharp ;
with torch dances and with brawls;* with banquets of
unspeakable length and splendour; and finally with
the curious decorums of the bedchamber, wherein
Maximilian and the Archduke, together with ‘a goodly
coverlid of scarlet,’ played a leading part. On the
morning before the wedding, the bride sent to each of
the princes a garland fashioned ‘ with golden thread,
and with threads of silk both white and cramoisy ; and
from each there hung a hoop of gold, with a stone
therein, and in those of the King and of Monseigneur
and of the grand masters hung rubies and diamonds.*
And in this manner do ladies and high-born damsels
send garlands when they marry. And the burgher
wives do the same, but at their espousals somewhat is
given in return, which is not done among the nobles.’
Philip, however, defied this ungallant, if aristocratic,
custom, and rewarded ‘the lady of the nuptials’ for
her wreath with the bonnet which he had himself been
wearing, all of black velvet, diamonds and pearls,
worth from two to three thousand crowns. Finally,
Philip and Frederick hung their garlands round their
necks in the fashion of an emprise for one entire
day, vowing to do battle with any who dared to touch
them.

The visitors were also much interested in the sights

_ * This orgaxi was the finest that he had ever heard, wrote Beads :

‘ its ^pes imitate the tones of trumpets, fife^ flutes, horns, basso^s,
bagpipes, drums, and the symphonies and singings of various birds
with such naturalness that they differ in no way from the originals.’

* ‘Bianle’ : ‘a brawle or dance, wherein many (men and women)
holding by the hands sometimes in a ring, and totherwhiles at length,
move sdl together.’ (Cotgrave.)

’ ‘ Cransselin ’ : kramUin, When Bertrandon de la Brocqui&re
pused through Austria on his way home from the Holy Land he was
ghren by the Duchess of Austria a bonnet or garland ‘of gc^ thread
w>d silk, a ring, and a diamond to wear on my head, according to the
fin^ioB ^ the country ’ ; and by the Lady of Valse ‘a diamond to put in
my hair, after the Austrian &sbi«m, and a bonnet (wreath) of pearls orna-
BMBted with a ring and a ruby.’ Compare also Illustrative Notes, 71.

270 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

and curiosities of Innsbruck, which had greatly thriven
under the aflFectionate patronage of Maximilian. ‘ Now
this town of Yzebrouch,’ writes Lalaing, ‘is a very
small one but very beautiful, seated on the river
between mountains and high rocks, very gay, very
well-walled; and there are high and comely houses,
all of free stone, painted and gilded. The house of
the King is exceeding beautiful and sumptuous, from
the which you shall see at one glance an income of
three hundred thousand florins of gold, by reason of
the mines of salt and silver that lie round about.’
These were the famous mines that made the fortune
of the Fuggers — ^the gold kings of Europe — fed the
leaking coffers of Maximilian the Penniless, and even
helped to supply the brimming mints of England
The whole district was humming with life: packed
with miners and overrun by innumerable wealthy
merchants, who lived on the spot and trafficked with
Venice the produce of other men’s toil. In the village
of Schwaz especially — ^where were beds of silver and
copper, of tin and of lead, worked by over 2,000
labourers ^ — ^there were many fat traders : ‘ on a feast-
day you shall see seven or eight hundred sturdy men
well accoutred and all covered with chains and other
objects of silver.’ The number and temper of these
magnates were, indeed, a source of considerable anxiety
to the Emperor, for they were always seeking to close
the village against outsiders and so ‘ make of it a good
town ’ ; a course of action that by no means commended
itself to Maximilian, who feared, not without reason,
that in time the new-made burghers would look upon
the mines as their own and resort to mutiny. He had,
therefore, prudently ordained that no man should be al-
lowed to carry a stick of more than one foot in length.

^ At one time there were as many as 30,000 miners. ‘ Insspruck
stuff is much sett by in all places as well for armor as for other
things of metalL* (Hoby). Montaigne and Vettori describe the
boiling of the mountain stream at ‘ Hala/ by which means the salt
was obtained ^more beautiful than can be imagined, whence tlie
emperor draws great profit/

HEIDELBERG 271

Yet even the silver mines were not Maximilian’s
dearest pride, and he was soon displaying the un-
numbered wonders of his war-stores, which included
every variety of arm, armour and artillery, with many
strange and ingenious engines for their fashioning.
And though the visitors thought it the most magnificent
collection in the world, the Emperor told them that he
wished to have as much in four places : at Vienna for
the Turks ; at Breisach for the Swiss ; at Mechlin
for the French ; and at Innsbruck for the Italians.
Nor did he forget to exhibit that famous genealogy,
that traced his descent from Hector of Troy and
showed ‘whence were procreated all the Dukes of
Austria even to Monseigneur, with the wives whom
they have espoused, and to what families they have
allied themselves, and what children they have had’:
hardly, one would imagine, a satisfactory literature for
the husband and step-son of a mere Bianca Sforza.

But duty and the Netherlands were beckoning to
Philip, and, ‘ not without great regrets,’ he had soon
to set his steps to the north. One pleasure, however,
still remained to the Prince : a visit to the old Elector
Palatine of the Rhine, for the purpose of exhibiting
to this affectionate father (who ‘ loved his son dearly
and resembled him in his gentle manners’) his own
effectiveness as instructor, and Frederick’s proficiency
as pupil, in all the aits and graces of life.

^on, therefore, the pair were climbing the steeps
of the Jettenbahel, that high and famous hill of
Heidelberg, whereon, says Hubertus, had dwelt in
ancient days the sorceress Jetta, prophesying from her
mountain eyrie, and telling strange tales of the palaces
and prides that should one day crown its heath^rown
solitudes. In the famous Castle that had fulfilled her
prediction — ‘a place very beautiful and solid, con-
tahpung four great buildings of freestone and slate,
each of which would suffice to lodge a very great
king'^ — they stayed for three days, to the gratification
* See IQas&ative Notes, 47.

272 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

of the old gentleman, who showed off with pride the
really remarkable splendours of his gold plate, and
the largest stags’ heads that the Archduke had ever
seen in his life. Before leaving, Philip ordered
Frederick to mount his own specially caparisoned
charger, and astonish the company with some of his
new-learned cunning. So a fine display of horseman-
ship took place. Putting spurs to his steed, the
young man dashed at full pace round the courtyard,
then, reining the charger to a sudden stop, hurled a
spear so high into the air that it fell into the windows
of the great tower over the Castle entrance. ‘And
all, especially the women, marvelled greatly that the
horse had not fallen, but been able to hold his ground
on the smooth stone pavement of the courtyard.’ The
Elector laughed, and when Philip asked whether
Frederick had been instructed according to his de-
sires, thanked the Prince and promised that, should
he not be able to do it in person, his son should repay
his generous patron with faithful service.

On their arrival in the Netherlands Prince and
Palsgrave were received with great zeal and acclama-
tion, and, though it might have been supposed that,
after so lengthy an absence, there would have been no
lack of honourable work to bis hand, the single and
simple aim of Philip’s mind seems still to have been
the entertainment of women. Many distinguished
ladies had gathered to receive him, and ‘ were so well
treated that better were not possible.’ For ‘Mon-
seigneur knew not how to think enough for their diver-
sion : now with dancing, now with arranging combats
in the chambers, now with taking them a-hunting ; and
verily they were treated so well, and in so goodly
a fashion, that they said that they had never in all
their lives seen so gallant and gorgeous a feasting.*
Finally, ‘to make them yet better pastime,’ Philip
commanded that the four ‘emprises’ of the nuptial
garlands, which had remained unaccomplished at
Innsbruck, should be fulfilled j and the last appearance

YEARS OF STRESS 273

—so far as we are concerned— of this tragical comedian,
father to the greatest Empire of the world, is upon
the lists at Brussels : embraved in apparel of gold and
silver with housings of the red colour of the rose, on
his head ‘ a white plumage adorned with gold-
smithries,’ and beside him the Palsgrave and many
grand masters clad in the garish hues of Castile.
‘ And in all the windows in all the market-place were
only ladies to be seen.’

‘And yet,’ declares Lalaing with a dramatically
simple piety, ‘when God wisheth for people, they
cannot be disputed or denied to Him.’ And but three
years were to pass before Philip the Fair lay stark and
dead in a Spanish mortuary, insensible even to the
presence of the one faithful woman whose pathetic
madness was ever to ‘ kiss the feet of her husband as
though he had been alive.’

The next ten years of Frederick’s career were more
strenuous than successful. ‘Till now he had led a
pleasurable life, but he fell from henceforward upon
cares and troubles.’ Wars and rumours of wars
became his portion, and he appears, first, in the
famous Bavarian struggle for succession, fighting
loyally for his family against his Emperor and his
convictions, and furthering by his tactful treatment of
Maximilian the cause of peace ; ’ next, hurrying to
Guelderland to assist his friend Archduke Philip
against the perennially active Charles of Egmond, and
returning for want of time and transport, on foot * like
a landsknecht, carrying his long spear on his shoulder’;*
and, last, accompanying the Emperor through his

* See lOttstratiTe Notes, 48.

* MaxnaUian, who chanced to meet Frederick and bis little band
a£ friends marching in this practical manner, was so delighted at the
sfMiCtacle that, a few days later, be himself enteied CcrfogM in a like
^ibioa, at die bead of 90onotdes of Germany.

274 the adventures of a palsgrave

inglorious Italian campaign, and himself threatening
Venice so nearly that even that ‘intemerat Virgin’
trembled in her lagoons. To be short, he ‘ learned the
art of war in such a fashion that he was thenceforward
reckoned as a most excellent hero and soldier,’ besides
gaining in no dubious manner the friendship of the
warm-hearted Maximilian.^ It was not till the year
1513 that his wandering star led him to the Nether-
lands to face the chief romance of his life.

The little drama opens with an act which, though in
itself neither romantic nor remunerative, is interesting
to Englishmen as being the only occasion on which
Frederick appeared under the English flag. Louis XII.
of France, who had succeeded by the multiplicity of
his claims in becoming the common foe of England,
Germany and Spain, was the antagonist of the piece.
And the leading figure was the English Henry VIII.,
who, in the finest flush of his youth and gaiety, sailed
over the sea to Calais with intent to compel the
French King to a more modest and suitable frame of
mind. Henry was reputed to possess a great treasure
of ready money, so there flocked to his standard not
only the whole nobility of Brabant, Flanders and
Hainault, but also many Germans, including Maxi-
milian himself, ‘which was an unheard-of thing.’*
The young King had, in fact, applied to the Emperor
for a trained soldier to assist him in the command erf
his troops, and Maximilian, ever solicitous both for
farthings and for fame, had promptly presented him-
self in person at Guinegate, and been enrolled in the
English army for the noble sum of a hundred crowns
a day.

In this moment of prosperity the Imperial pauper
did not forget his equally debt-driven friend. Sum-

' See Illustrative Notes, 49.

’ ‘ Unto which place the Emperor repaired . . . like a mighty airf
firiendly pnnee, taking of the king his Grace’s wages, as weU for his
own person as for his retinue, the which is a rare thing seldom seo)^
heard, or read, that an emperor should take wages, and fight under
a kin^s banner.’ (Cavendish, Life of IVolsey.)

HENRY VIIL'S RECRUITS m

moning Frederick with affectionate brutality from the
bed of sickness on which the Prince had for some time
been prostrate, he urgently advised him to offer his
service and a squadron of horse to the King of England,
‘who has not his like in the world for riches and
liberality.’ Disease, he added characteristically, came
ever from inaction, which was as harmful to the bodies
of valiant men as rust to iron;* and the sooner
Frederick returned to work the better he would be.
The Palsgrave agreed gladly to the suggestion, but
with admirable caution asked for an Imperial guarantee
for the payment of his troops, and when this was
declined sent a messenger to England to seek certainty
from Henry himself.* The English King replied
evasively that for the moment he had warriors enough
and to spare, so the project fell through. Frederick,
however, joined the Emperor in Picardy about a month
later with a small but ‘ most select body of men.’ * He
unfortunately arrived too late to take part in that
famous Battle of Spurs, whereat the Frenchmen ran
away ‘ so incredible fast and far ’ ; or to be present at
the splendid entry into Terouenne, when Henry —
then a comely boy of but three-and-twenty years,
brave in running work of finest gold — took possession
of the town. He was in time, however, to assist at
the bombardment of Toumai, and to behold his liege-
lord, grey-headed and the master-monarch of Europe,
wearing as a soldier of England the Cross of St.
George with a rose, and serving under the command

* This recalls the anecdote of Lord Herbert of Chertwry and the
Marqnis Sjanoia ; ‘ He demanded me, . . . “ Of what died Sir
Fnmcki Vere?” I told him, “Because he had nothmg to do.*
Spinola refdkd, “ And it is enough to kill a general.” ' (^Autohography.}

* The Spaniard, Don Pedro Astasio (called in the annals Pettvs
TiwcKf, and in the English dispatch Pedrastke), was the messenger.
The letters were addressed to Sir Robert Wingfield, and reached him
at Nienport, in Flanders. The ambassador’s caustic answer is given in
Letters a/td Pe^^s, Henry V/II., voL L, where it is incorrectly
calendared as teing from, instead (d to, the Count Palatine. ‘ The
King,’ writes Wingfield, ‘does not wish to have, either through the
emperor w otherwise, horsemen after the manner of Germany.’

* HaiFs Cinmicle.

276 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

of a foreign prince young enough to be his grand-
son.

After the fall of the cities, Henry, ‘ being tired of the
war and its cost, which reached daily to more than
70,000 crowns a day,’ sent Wolsey— ‘ his almoner,
who was thereafter cardinal and kept all affairs in his
hands’ — to treat of peace with King Louis. And
hereupon, says Hubertus, Maximilian departed in
secrecy and dudgeon and betook him back to Germany.
The relative positions of the young King and the
elderly Emperor had, in fact, proved one of almost
impossible delicacy, and three days after the formal
capitulation of Tournai, with no braver requiem than
a meagre stirrup cup, the inglorious service came to
an inglorious end.^

The German princes, following the example of their
suzerain, now also went their ways, many receiving
stately rewards, but Palsgrave Frederick, grieves the
annalist, ‘ remained, probably through forgetfulness,
unrewarded, although shortly before the King had
graciously accepted a fine suit of armour from him, and,
being so liberal a lord, could assuredly only have been
kept from making this good to him by his innumerable
businesses. Indeed, the King gave me to understand
this long years after, when he handed over to me, for
the Palsgrave, a goblet of pure Hungarian gold, above
eight hundred ducats in value, whose curious crafts-
manship was worth even more.’ As a fact, apart from
this single gift, it does not appear that Frederick had
any strong claim on Henry’s gratitude. Hubertus at
least records little of this English incident save long
and intimate conversations between Maximilian and
the Palsgrave on the important subject of the succes-
sion to the Empire, for the which purpose Frederick
* ever industriously suggested the name of the Arch-
duke Charles.’

It was probabty in consequence of this fine diplomacy

* Cf. Maqu^riau’s Chronicle for an account of the parting betwwa
Henry and Masamilian.

RESPONSIBILITY 277

—though Maximilian seems to have displayed the
most violent indignation at the idea — that Frederick
was now advanced to a post of great honour and
dignity. For when the future Charles V. arrived in
Tournai to greet and congratulate his ally the King of
England, Frederick was immediately attached to his
person, and commanded to accompany him home as
the Imperial member^ of the triad of tutors, that
was now appointed for ‘ the care, conduct and culture ’
of the Archduke, and to counteract French influence
at the Court of Burgundy. The office was one of the
highest importance, bearing as it did the weighty and
fragile burden of the equilibrium of Europe. It was
also, as will appear, a task that demanded no usual
degree of delicacy and tact. Frederick entered upon
it, however, with every token of good fortune and
under the mellowest auspices of Imperial favour.
Finally, to complete his achievement, when Charles’s
Governor, the ^igneur de Chifevres, who had hitherto
been all-powerful in the education and management of
the young prince, complained to Maximilian of the
change, the Emperor not only ratified the appointment,
but in addition allotted to the Palsgrave a place in the
Councils second to the Regent Margaret alone; and
Frederick thus became first prince of the blood at the
Archducal Court, taking precedence over many who
were senior to him in age. Charles himself was at
this time a sickly boy of fourteen years, and had his
home in the Netherlands; and thither accordingly,
to Mechlin and finally to Brussels, the Palsgrave
repaired.

In the first days of his new office Frederick bore
himself with such reticence and circumspection that
he was loved and honoured of all. ‘Every man
rejoiced from his heart that the care of this young
monarch, who was one day to be lord of well-nigh

* T&e other two were the Spanish ambassador, Don Juan de
repr^ntmg Ferdinand Arag^ and Fk^is, Count de
Boren and Sd^^neur ^FYssel^en, r^yceaenting Hesny VllL

278 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

the whole of Christendom, should be given over to such
a prince, himself the descendant of emperors and
kings. Whithersoever rode the Palsgrave thither ran
the people to see him, no otherwise than had a god
been passing by. Nor is it to be believed how highly
he was extolled by the noble maids and matrons
whose every favour he possessed.’ Master of all
knightly arts, his gay dexterity gave birth to a proverb,
and ‘ to ride like the Palatine ’ became the common
aspiration of the Court. It is true that an excessive
devotion to pleasure caused his Imperial patron to
complain of a certain ineffectiveness in the realm of
high politics, while the English monarch openly
declared that the new tutors, including the Palsgrave,
were of no more use than had they been at Rome.*
Yet Frederick’s influence over his pupil was in the
main a good one, and it was while under his govern-
ance that Charles made his most striking advances in
manliness both of body and of mind.

But these days of grace and dignity lasted not long,
and with their ending begins the comedy of his
courtships, or (as it appeared to the faithful annalist)
the tragedy of his rejections.

The Court of Brussels was at this moment a very
hotbed of marriages, or at least of betrothals. Charles
himself had already been affianced both to Claude of
France and to Mary Tudor,* the earliest of some ten
engagements in which he became involved before his
final alliance with Isabella of Portugal. Of his sister^
Mary, though but nine years old, was already linked
to the ill-starred destinies of Louis of Hungary, add
Isabella, aged thirteen, to the more despicable fortunes
of Christian of Denmark. Catherine was as yet a
child in Spain. So Eleonore, the eldest and the best-
beloved, alone remained to gladden the eyes and spur

^ C£ Lettres de Louis XII,

* In a letter of Lewis Maroton (January 9, 1513) lie infbnns
Spinelli that the Count Palatine Frederick is to be sent to Engiaad
^ arrange this alliance, Z. a?idP, Henry VII i. 3648. See alse
ii 2891.

ELEONORE

279

the hopes of princely Europe. This task, however,
she was amply fitted to fulfil. For, if no transcendent
beauty, she yet, at her present charming age of sixteen,
possessed, says Hubertus, attractions of no mean
order : ‘ A forehead lofty and smooth, whereon neither
time nor cares had traced a line ; eyebrows black and
arching, and ever-smiling eyes ; cheeks of rose ; a
little, gracious mouth : vermilion lips ; teeth small and
white ; a countenance both lively and modest ; an
enchanting speech.’ When she appeared at a tourna-
ment in a straight robe of silver cloth, her white
breast powdered with jewels, and on her head ‘a
black comette which mighty well became her, and
gave her a lovely grace,’ she was the darling of all
eyes. Moreover, she was a glad and mirthful lady.
*La plus joyeuse dame qu’oncques on vit,’ wrote
Marot later of her, and * in truth a masterpiece, so
wise and gay, so comely, so delicious,’ was the verdict
of Laurent Vital ; ^ while the affection, ‘ more than
brotherly,’ that the unemotional Charles displayed,
even after years of separation, for ‘ Madame, ma
meilleure soeur,’ is well known to all readers of his
letters. If, therefore, Eleonore remained unmarried
long after the espousals of two of her younger sisters,
it was but because no alliance of suitable dignity had
so far offered itself.

Now, as Tutor and First Prince of the Blood, the
Count Palatine was constantly in attendance upon the
Archduke, and therefore constantly in the presence of
this princess. And, of all the infatuated ladies of the
Court-, she quickly became not only the most infatuated
but also the least behindhand in exhibiting her infatua-
tion. Indeed she was as little sated with beholding ‘ his
blooming manhood, his goodly form, his crisped and
yellow hair,* his stately breast and his valiant counten-
ance,’ as in listening to the ceaseless h3rmn of praise

* * Utraqiie fonnosa est, sed re tamen altera major
Ilia serit lifces ; Helkmcra fdgat* (Theockms Beza«}

* See Ilk^rathne NoleS} yy.

280 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

wherewith he was magnified by the courtiers. Daily
she grew more and more entranced, nor sought to
hide it from the eyes of any. At every moment she
would say: ‘Look! Prince Frederick is taking his
spear. Look ! he is laying it down. Look ! some news
is being announced to him.’ Or again, ‘ See ! there is
something broken on his helmet. See ! they are
reaching to him a stronger lance. O how doughtily
he bears himself! how well he hits his opponents!
how the splinters of his spear fly abroad ! ’

This state of affairs could not long remain hidden
from the Palsgrave himself and he rose gallantly to
the occasion. ‘ Being likewise stricken by the beam
of love, he did what he knew and could to be comfort-
able to the Lady Eleonore, and told her how that he
stood and lived on naught but her contentment.’ And
now, though hedged and herded by the utmost rigours
of Burgundian etiquette, nothing availed to stay the
course of their passion. For wheresoever they met,
whether dancing^ or walking or following the hunt,*
they showered forth their love by signs if not by
words; and when they were apart messengers were
kept ever on the run, ‘ bearing greetings and good-
morrows, and fetching to and fro roses, violets and
the like.’ ‘ And albeit this was done with the utmost
secrecy, yet here, as ever, the more the love was
hidden the greater it waxed.’

Nor, in truth, was the concealment very effectual,
and soon nothing was spoken of at Court save the
loves of the Count Palatine and the Princess. In
the minds of all Frederick was already regarded as
Eleonore’s husband, and even allotted, together with
her hand, the regency of the Netherlands. Indeed,

* There is a small manuscript book, bound with the arms of Mai^;at^
of Austria, and preserved in the Royal Library at Brussels, Which gives
the ceremonies and etiquettes of fifty-nine dances, mentioned by name.
Many of these titles, such as the ‘ Joyeux de Bruxelles,’ ‘ Je languis,’
* Une fois avant que de mourir,’ and especially ‘ Va-fen, mon amouienx
ddsm’ seem especially well suit^ to thp Palsgraye’s plight.

* Sec ISnstiative Notes, 51. ‘ r

ROMANCE

281

when about this time he visited, as Charles’s proxy,
the neighbouring principality of Luxemburg, every
one looked upon him as their future governor, and
received him as a reigning monarch. As for Eleonore
she was congratulated for remaining ‘ a proper princess’
in her native land, instead of being wedded into un-
friendly far-off climes. Her sister, Isabella of Denmark
— the sad little consort of ‘ the Nero of the North’ —
wrote a pathetic letter wishing all happiness to her
love, and pra3dng her, whatever happened, to remain
faithful to her prince. To be allied to kings or mighty
potentates was no great happiness, said this Queen
of disillusions. ‘It is already a grievous thing to
embark upon marriage with one whom you do not
love, whose character you do not know. But, further-
more, you are required to follow this stranger to the
ends of the earth, and never to see again your home
and your family. Vain is this name of queen, for if
you come to know it well you shall flee from it,
abominate it and grow pale over it, no less than should
you tread with naked feet upon a snake.’ It may
chance that neither spouse can understand the other’s
smallest word ; and what manner of love may arise
when a married pair speak only through interpreters ?
Moreover, queens are kept in a kind of prison, that
the mjqesty of their rank may not be staled by custom
or withered by the frequent glances of men. Other-
wise shall be the fate of Eleonore; let her love
Frederick, since she knows himself, his family, his
country and his tongue. Nor shall it trouble her that
her lover is only a Palsgrave, for, even so, he ranks
next after a king, and, as the son of an elector of
emperors, is entitled to the name of duk&

‘ Such and the like exhortations lit the love-flame of
Elemaore even more furiously,’ and induced her to
encourage her suitor’s hopres so well that at last he
thought no less than that the Princess was actually
his. He no longer deemed it necessary to hide his
fed&ogs, but accepted with fervour the congratulations

282 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

of all the Court, adding ever, indeed, that he was un-
worthy of so high a destiny. In brief, scarce any
doubted of the approaching marriage.

Yet, as the poet warns all would-be courtiers, the
more one thinks to be fortunate and happy, so much
more shall one be in peril to fall ; ^ and ‘ the grete
wyndes that blowe in hye courtes' were already
sweeping round the lifted head of this presumptuous
darling of fortune. For, like all proper heroes,
Frederick was possessed of secret enemies, and these
were two personages of no lesser importance than
Chi&vres, the Lord High Chamberlain, and Lannoy,
the Chief Equerry.

Guillaume de Croy, Seigneur de Chifevres (commonly
known to his English contemporaries as ‘the Lorde
Shivers ’ or ‘ Schewers ’ *) was, as has been said, one of
the earliest governors of the youthful Charles V., and
had strongly resented the appointment of Frederick.
The two presently, however, became good friends
enough. Indeed, the former Governor, who had been
raised to the yet more intimate office of Chamberlain,
often consulted the Prince on questions of health and
nourishment, and even at times condescended to take
his advice in these matters. Thus, on one occasion
he complained to the Palsgrave that the boy ate little
and remained small and weak. ‘ It is no wonder,'
replied Frederick, ‘ since he stays ever at home, and
is permitted nothing that might give him desire to eat
Were he but allowed to go out now and again, and to
eat with others, the food would taste the better to him
for the company.’ ‘ But who could entertain so great
a personage ? ’ asked ChiOvres, aghast at the novelty
of the idea. Yet soon after both he and the Prince de

‘ ‘ Of somoche as thou weaest to be most ewrous and happy »
moche more shalt thou be in grete penll to falle, lyke to hym that is
mounted in to the most hye place. For to them whom fartune die
variaUe hath most hyely lyfte up and enhaunsed resteth nomore but
Sot to felle fro so hye doun.’ (TAe Curial of Alain Ckartier, tr. fey
Wltiam Caxton, 1484.)

> Sed many letters of the day.

CHIEVRES AND LANNOY 283

Cbimay not only visited the Palsgrave’s table ‘ to try
the German cookery,’ but also praised the foreigfn fare
so zealously to the delicate boy that at last he too was
taken with a longing for it And now, though etiquette
still forbade the Archduke’s dining otherwise than in
lonely state, there scarce passed a week in which he
did not have brought to him four or fiw dishes from
the Count Palatine’s kitchen. ‘And since it went
thenceforward better with him and he grew a little,
they named the Palsgrave, not unreasonably, the Arch-
duke's foster-father {nutritot^' But of late years the
intercourse between the two had changed its colour.
The Chamberlain had grown to resent the influence
and popularity of the Tutor, and jealousy had taken
the place of friendship. Chifevres was now, in the
expressive German phrase, the Spinnenfeind, or spider-
enemy, of Frederick.

Charles de Lannoy, Seigneur de Maingoval,* who
later won laurels at Pavia and was made Viceroy of
Naples, had also suffered in his pride through the
Count Palatine. Escuier desctierie, and director of all
the courtly exercises of horsemanship and chivalry, it
behoved him to maintain in the lists an untarnished
dignity; but this was just what the Palsgrave had
not permitted him to do. Music, it appears, was the
cause of the quarrel. Frederick, who had tastes above
the common, was a great lover of this art, declaring it
to be a pursuit ‘ that delighted the spirit and became
as well the man of war as the man of peace.’ And in
this he was very sensibly supported by many of his
friends. But there were some at the Court who
thought differently, maintaining that the art rendered
men weak and womanly, and that it was not easy
for one to be inclined to it and at the same time
to retain a bold and virile mind. The Palsgrave re-
gaxxled this in the light of a personal insult, and the
matter was held to be of so great importance, that

* Hsbatns t-alh him Monckeava]!, wbidi Von Biiknr wrongly
i nt et i aets as standing for Ugode Moncada. CC. Modler.

284 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

Charles himself was approached on the subject by
Frederick and his music-loving friends, who in-
cluded the Margrave John of Brandenburg and
many gentlemen of note. These besought the boy-
prince to allow them to vindicate their honour with
their daggers. ‘And verily they would have done
it,’ boasts Hubertus, ‘ had not the Archduke held it
more reasonable to settle the business by an open
joust’

A tourney accordingly took place with three cham-
pions on either side, the mightiest of Frederick’s an-
tagonists being the said Charles de Lannoy. Their
bodies were protected with harness to the knees only,
and for weapons they were given spears with ‘ blurs,’ *
and swords ‘ which were in truth not sharp and cutting,
but of a goodly weight’ The music-haters were soon
overthrown, not one of them being able to withstand
the thrusts of the Palsgrave. To Lannoy, in especial,
was allotted a terrific stroke upon his left arm : where-
upon he loudly complained that this was against the
rules of tourney, since combatants should only strike
at the head. The Palsgrave ‘ eyed him askance.'
‘ Why, then,’ he said, ‘ do you not keep your head still,
where I can hit it, instead of bobbing it backwards at
every stroke ? ’ For this also was against the rules.
And hereupon he loosed at him such a blow on the
temple that the world darkened to the Chief Equerry,
and ‘ he tumbled backwards a goodly way.’ Moreover,
Frederick would have leapt the barrier and continued
his forcible tuition, had not Charles himself interfered.
* And it was comical to see how sour a mien made
Lannoy and his comrades when the armour was laid
aside; and how that their lips and cheeks were so
swollen with rage that they seemed more like unto
monsters than men, and how that every one laughed at
them.’ And from that day forward none had railed
at music or her lovers, while the Princess, who herself

* ‘ Hasta coronata ’ : KrotiUin ; Fr. ‘•rochets ’ : ‘the blune, button^ or
Uoat inm of a tilting-stafi^’ (Cotgrave.)

INTRIGUES

28s

played melodiously on many instruments, ‘ such as the
lute and the clavichord {manicordion), and could take a
part with others in singing, sank deeper than ever
before in the enchanted waters of passion.

Now, however, the day of reckoning was drawing
near. For the injured and indignant Lannoy was
bound to the great Chifevres faction, and this was
becoming hourly more powerful in its influence over
the mind of Charles.* The two lords, it is true, ‘ let
it not be noticed that they envied the Palsgrave’s
happiness, and bore them even as though they saw
it as gladly as others.’* But the spiders’ webs
were spinning, and the beginning of the end had
come.

No sooner had the Palsgrave returned to Brussels
from the Luxemburg expedition than his enemies
began secretly to cast about for means to compass his
downfall. Their first endeavours had no marked
result of the desired kind, but they produced a dramatic
scene and went near to costing two brave men their
lives. One of the Court Chamberlains, the Seigneur
de Glayon, was as famous for his strength as for his
proficiency in arms, and it seemed to the conspirators
a plan full of promise to procure a meeting of the
most dangerous description possible between this
Titan and the hitherto invincible Palsgrave. So they
incited the Prince to challenge the Chamberlain to a
course to the utterance, or with sharp spears, a pastime
so deadly that it was but rarely practised. The plot
was successful. Frederick, never backward in such
matters, leaped to the suggestion; Glayon gladly

* See IBastrative Notes, 52.

* * I>e Chi^wes,^ declares Sandoval^ * bought the place of Chamber-
bim of Prince Chimay, and, being once about the young prince’s
perscm, omitted nothing that might gmn his favour.’

* Lannoy himself was later the <^ject of bitter envy. ‘ Cmnme il

i^ns bcmnor^ que les autres de grandes richesscs et hoimeurs,’
writes Brantdme, ‘ aussi estoit il n^essain; quii cndums^ f^usieure
Impedes d^nvie et de hayne, ct se deflfendit avec de tres-exquis
ait&es de Cour de ceax qu’il avoit diensez. Bern advis pour les
iivoris de Cour, conune ccartes il fit, et s’en despestra bravement’

286 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

accepted his challenge ; and Charles, who had never
yet beheld the sport, willingly appointed a day.

Now this, according to Hubertus, was the method
of the perilous play: ‘You shall choose out the best
and strongest horses, whereon you shall lay high
and deep saddles; and in these you shall sit up
to the girdle clad in the heaviest arms and armour, so
that it shall not be possible to be dislodged from the
horse. The lance or pole therefor, which is called a
planson,''- is of thick wood, and heavier than any
could believe who had not seen; therewith the one
runs at the other, and they strike one another as they
can. If neither of them miss or swerve or loose the
bridle — ^which is the most important matter of all — or
fall backwards, then must the horse, of necessity and
not without sore peril to the rider, tumble right back’
Many of Frederick’s friends warned him of the
folly of the enterprise. Indeed, an ancient noble-
man, who had been steward of the household to his
father before him, forbade him the diversion on the
score of justice to his heirs, and in consideration alike
of the imminent peril of death and the monstrous ex-
penses of equipment. But it was all in vain. ‘ No
arguments availed with the Palsgrave, and he was
wroth with the old man, and equipped himself with so
splendid an accoutrement that all things glistered
with the gold and the silver. And he rode in a stately
company on horseback and afoot with gladness into
the yard,* governing his courser in so fine sort, even
as though he danced or flew, that even to this day it is
commonly said of a goodly rider : He sits his horse
like a Palsgrave.’

The combatants fixed their lances or plansons under
their arms, and ‘ amid the loud music of trumpets, ran
like the wind on one another.’ The Palsgrave directed

* * Hasta quam plansonem vocant.'

* ‘ In the palace ... is a spacious and very airy hall, where th^
jonst ad sdU rasa, when by reason of bad weather they cannot joost
in the great piazza before the palace.’ (Beatis.)

INFORTUNIUM 287

bis spear full on Glayon, who, to avoid it, leaned a
little to one side, though he afterwards declared that it
was his horse that was to blame. The blow, however,
did not fail of its purpose, for it caught him sideways
on the shield ‘so mightily’ that horse and rider fell
together to the ground. The spectators raised a great
shout over this victory of the Palsgrave, but (‘vide
quid infortunium possit ! ’) in the very moment of his
triumph the hero’s horse — whether terrified by the
shock that he had suffered, or feeling freed from the
burden of the spear which the Palsgrave had at once
cast from him — came down upon its knees and fell
right over, squeezing the rider so sorely in his high
saddle, that a portion of his spine was damaged.

• And the Lady Eleonore, who was standing with her
brother Charles in the window, grew so greatly pale
thereover that, had she not been afraid in his presence,
she would assuredly have fallen into a swoon. Yet
was her courage once more refreshed, for that the
Palsgrave Frederick, so soon as he came again upon
his horse, swung his arm aloft and gave her thereby
to understand that naught was amiss with him.
Though verily he did but counterfeit this, and must
needs hide the pain in his back as best he might’

In truth, the results of this sharp-tilting were little
short of disastrous. The two combatants were taken
from the field and their armour stripped from off
them; ‘and, when the fury of eagerness had cooled,
they realised the strength of the planson.' The
Sdgpeur de Glayon complained that all his body was
as though beaten, and not only did these sufferings
remain with him throughout his life, but when he
came to die the physicians attributed his death to this
tilt alone. Even the Palsgrave was forced to lie in
bed for a goodly while with pains, ‘ which to this
day he cannot shake off, and which add a great
burden to his age.’^ Moreover — and here was both
the gist and the worst of the matter — the emotion of
* See lUostia^ Notes, 53.

288 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

Eleonore had become more than ever apparent to all
the Court.

Not that the Princess’s brother had as yet, it would
seem, any inkling of the intrigue. The idea of such a
courtship would probably never enter his head, filled
as this had been from earliest youth with the
knowledge that his eldest and dearest sister was
destined to share whichever of the three great thrones
of Europe most important to the welfare of the Haps-
burgs — Poland, Portugal and France — should first
happen to be available. There had already, in fact,
been one lively negotiation conducted on her behalf
with the newly widowed King of Poland, and the
letters that passed between her grandfather and her
aunt on the subject show plainly the absence of all
suspicion in her guardians’ minds. What would
‘ Madame Leonore ’ think of King Sigismund as a
husband ? writes Maximilian ; he is a lovely plump
personage, white all over, with a fine red mouth and
hair a little grizzled. ‘ I have spoken to her,’ replies
Margaret, ‘ telling her the virtues and beauties of the
said King’s person, with the greatness of his kingdom,
and all else that can be said : to the which. Monseigneur,
she listened discreetly and very gently, with a little
timidity, and with all my endeavours I could not draw
from her other words than. . . .’ Here the letter un-
luckily breaks off, but the writer does not seem to have
dreamed of any obstacles save a maidenly sh3mess.*

Then, the Archduke would expect admiration for
his heroic friend. For Charles seems to have had a
peculiar affection for Frederick, dating perhaps from
an early and treasured gift of a rocking-horse;* and
he displayed his love in every possible way. Thus,
after his emancipation from the authority of the R^^ent
Margaret, he had continued to pay the full salary to
his erstwhile tutor, though Chifevres was pensioned

^ Cf. Hare's Marguerite of Austria.

* la the Comptes de Lille for 1505 there is an entry for
hishmg of the horse which the Count Pj^tine gave to the prince.*

THE GOLDEN FLEECE 289

off at a far lower sum, and it was the Palsgrave whom
he chose to be his representative at the important
ceremony of his inauguration as Duke of Luxemburg^.
When he succeeded to the throne of Castile many
plans were again debated for the Prince’s advance-
ment, including the vice-royalty of Naples, the charge
of the Archduke Ferdinand, and a brilliant marriage
with Elvira of Cordova, the daughter of the great
Gonsalvo;^ though all, for one reason or another,
fell through. Furthermore, so soon as it lay in his
power, Charles bestowed upon Frederick the highest
honour at his command, the Order of the Golden
Fleece, whereby he was privileged to be present at
the great festival that took place at Brussels in the
November of the year 1516.

This was the first chapter of the Order under the
sovereignty of Charles, and it proceeded with unusual
splendour, there being no less than fifteen vacant
‘collars’ to distribute.* ‘It was a triumphant and
exquisite thing,’ writes Laurent Vital with rapture.
The banquet was in the great hall, ‘ all hung with the
goodliest tapestries, historied with the mystery of
the Fleece.’ And ‘ it was a dream to see the diversity
of the courses ’ : peacocks in their pride ; swans and
pheasants ‘all decked in their plumages as though
in life’; high castles and wild men; monsters and
diymaeras; knights and syrens of the sea, ‘with all
other things which at that season it was possible to
obtain.’ Nor, amid all the dignity and splendour
of the pageant, was the Count Palatine himself an
unimportant figure. For Charles had decreed that

• ‘The Count Palatine ... is to marry the daughter of the great
CaM^ Gonsalvo Ferrandes. It is said, however, that the Cardinal
rf Toledo has matle the same match for Count Pcarsayn, Chiivretf
atBibew.’ Letter of S{»nelli to Brian Tuke, £. ami P. Hemy VIII.,
■tul ii. pt. ii. This is later alluded to by Tunstal as the cause of
dd&vres^ jealousy and Frederick’s downfall.

* Sandoval says that Chi^res persuaded Charles ‘ to hold a chapter

of (he Order of the Golden Fleece, where many undeserving persons
were adbnitted to that honour, iriiich brought odium and disgrace

^pen Vi^mam de Croy.’

290 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

he should rank next after Francis of France and
Ferdinand of Austria, and in their absence he took
the precedence of all the newly created knights.

Finally, the boy had chosen above all others the
company of his much-loved friend on his approaching
expedition to Spain.

For the time had come when Charles must leave
the Netherlands for the south. It was the year 1517.
Ferdinand the Catholic had been dead for some
eighteen months, and Spain was clamouring for the
presence of her King. Flanders, though still the
milch-cow of his finances, ^ was henceforward to play
but a secondary part in the troubled life of Charles of
Austria and Castile.

So the youthful sovereign betook him with all his
court, including Eleonore and Frederick, to the sea-
port of Middelburg in Zealand. There had been,
indeed, some idea of leaving the Princess behind as
Regent of the Netherlands. Though her powers of
governing might not, at the immature age of eighteen,
be great, her presence would, it was thought, promote
and maintain the necessary affection between the
Flemish people and their absent ruler. Moreover, her
selection would prevent the possibility of the reinstate-
ment in the regency of the Duchess Margaret, and
this to the Croy party, who were the instigators of the
alternative plan, was a matter of considerable moment.
Eleonore, however, was decidedly averse from the idea,
having no mind to be left in the dreary Low Countries
while her brother, and still more her lover, were
disporting themselves in Spain. She had therefore
conceived the ingenious notion of softening Charles’s
heart through the medium of a Spanish serenade,*

^ In 1543, the captains of Charles’s army decided in a council of
war * qu’il valait mieux pour I’Empereur garder le certain, qui ^tait sa
vache de Flandre, que de se mettre au hasard de conqu6rir rmcertaii^
qui 6tait la ville d’ Alger.’ ( Vi^, des Souv. des Pays-Bas^ vol. iii. p. 441./

* The Spanish archives contain a poem written by Sancho Cota,
the secretary of El^nore, for his mistress to use on this important
ODca^cm. Ci Moeller.

KING CHARLES OF SPAIN 291

by which means — singing beneath his window on
a clear May night — she delicately conveyed to the
tyrant a portion at least of her griefs and desires.
The young King, who loved both music and his
sister, was melted at once, and the project of the
regency was abandoned. Possibly, even, his clem-
ency may have required no great amount of per-
suasion, since important news had recently arrived
of the death of Queen Mary of Portugal, and more
weighty plans for the future of Eleonore were already
afoot

Charles reached Middelburg, by way of Bruges
and Sluys, on July 4, and took up his abode in its
massive and ancient Abbey. The ladies did not arrive
till two days later. Having to pass over the Scheldt
from Bouchaute to Flushing— ' and since women are
commonly fearful,’ — they had waited for a better wind :

‘ in the which, verily, they were not disappointed, for,
half an hour after they had started, there sprang up a
very rude wind, by means whereof the waves and
billows rose so exceedingly that they were right well
washed. Yet, thanks be to God, they were in no
other danger, save that the more tender and timorous
felt a little sea-sick, whereby they were constrained
to nourish the codfish. Let this not displease my
hearers,’ adds the historian ' apologetically, ‘ for it is
spoken without ill intent and in all reverence ; but it
chanced just so ; and moreover, it is a mishap which
often befalls many. God knows in how short a time
these dames and damsels became devout, invoking
Gk>d to their assistance and His very worthy Mother,
with ample store of saints : each one given up to her
devotions, protesting and promising that, if they might
but escape without hurt from this perilous passage,
they would thenceforward fast on each Friday in
hcmour of the Passion, or on Saturday for love of the
Virgin Mary,’ The great wind, however, ‘ pushed the
ladies along,’ and, thus navigated, they came to the
> Laoi^t Vital.

292 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

desired land, where they mounted into chariots and
fared joyfully to Middelburg.

Here a noble armada was in readiness for the
voyagers, the Palatine, especially, having furnished
his ship with high heart and hope, and little thought
for webs or spiders. But the winds were unpro-
pitious, and three months were to pass before
the royal galleys hoisted sail, while the vessel of
Frederick was destined never to confront the rocky
coasts of Spain.

For the moment, however, the Palsgrave’s skies
appeared still clear and shining. Charles’s ministers
were engaged in unavailing regrets over the bad im-
pression which this delay would doubtless cause
among his new subjects, and Charles himself was
occupied with the important problem of how best to
pass the idle weeks, without quitting this dreaiy
shore and thereby awakening the jealousy and
suspicion of the Spaniards. Indeed, few of the
company supposed that the expedition would ever
really start, seeing that it was nearly two years since
the King of Aragon had deceased, and that for six-
teen months ‘they had ever talked of departing, but
done nothing.’ Charles seems to have shared the
impression. Yet, ‘ despite the evil and infected
marine air,’ he decided to stay till the winds should
amend, or till it should be so late in the season that
it could truly be said that he had done his utmost
to set out.^

So in this Island of Walcheren the Court remained,
taking their pastime within such a limit as would permit
them, should the wind change, to return in one day to
Middelburg. The farthest expedition seems to have
been to ‘ the pleasant place of Westhoven,’ a country
residence near the outer coast of the island, where
Charles lodged for many nights together with his
sister Eleonore, the Count Palatine, the Seigneur de

* ‘TTie King asserts he will go, even if it be in winter,’ writes
Timstal to Wolsey. (Z. and JP. ffemy F///., voL iL pt. ii.)

WALCHEREN

293

Chifevres and many others of the Court * It was a
very lovely station,’ says Laurent, ‘all close to the
dunes, lying in a fair and strong country. On the one
side are warrens full of wild cone3rs, and on the other
are girths and thick hedges, furnished with ditches
to make the country so much the stronger ; on the
third side are part gardens and part goodly meadows ;
and on the fourth are the lands for labour, which bring
in every year (if not lying fallow) more produce to
one acre of land than to an acre and a half of the best
soil an3rwhere else.’ Beyond the warrens and against
the dunes were the sands of the sea, ‘firm, fair and
level for to walk upon when the tide was out ; and it
was a pleasure, in the evening as in the morning, to
find oneself far from the roads, and to hear the little
birds sing which lurked in these girdles and hedge-
rows. Wherefore the lordships remained there
willingly.’

At other times Charles and his company would go
to inspect the waiting fleet at Arnemuyden, * and row
in ‘ botequins ’ to visit the artillery — ‘ marvellous
beautiful and abundant ’ — and the sumptuous lodgings
which had been prepared for the Court. In the
vessels they were feasted with sweetmeats of fruit or
‘almonds with biscuit very exquisite,' and then they
fared about in their boats, ‘with great store of oars,
navigating with flags unfurled,’ each boat having its
banner blazoned with the arms of the captain of the
great ship to which it belonged. ‘Thus they went
pla3ring about upon the water before Arnemuyden,
performing the Umkhon^ as the soldiers are wont to
do ; and the King, who led the business, went in front,

* The Cardinal Louis Aragon visited Chiles at Middelbtir^

duxing these three months^ and his secretary, Beads, saw * about three
IiuxinIim barques, Biscayan, English, Portuguese, Flemish, and Bretcm,
besides a few great ships, and certain covered barques which they
caB oarmche which were innumerable/

* A «dieeliiig movement used by cavalry to liarass the enemy.
Aitxis dPEmbry describes how the attendants at a feast, ‘ fmsoient passer
Wm les devant les ctmvives ctmme compagnie de gens de

294 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

and the other boats followed. And to have the honour
of navigating the best and the most cunningly, it is
not to be told how each strove to row the hardest, to
each boat being twenty-six or thirty rowers, and great
store of trumpets, tabourines, pipes and horns of
Germany.’ As each great ship was passed the artillery
went off, ‘so that God could not have been heard
thundering’: and they smacked right well of war,
adds Vital, who was in the forefront of the business,
being privileged to carry the King’s cloak against the
rain. To witness this sport the folk flocked to the
sea-shore by thousands, following along the dykes to
see the struggles of the sailors : ‘ and when they
passed their neighbours it cannot be told what
shouting there was, or how the trumpets sounded to
the annoyed ones. For they made great effort and
diligence to pass one another, even as though their
lives depended on it, or as if there had been a great
prize to be won by the best navigator.’

Thus Charles and his Court found for themselves
no inconsiderable degree of pleasure and diversion
during the long delay, while to Frederick the
presence of his beloved doubtless touched the barren
sands to gold. But the Palsgrave’s evil hour was
upon him. And this was how it came.

While the company, brilliant as a night of stare,
were still waiting for the north wind ‘ to lighten their
sails and push them from the shore,’ the thoughts
of Frederick had fallen anxiously on the dangers
of so long and perilous a voyage, and on the grievous
fact that he must needs journey on a different vessel
from his beloved, whence he could afford her neither
comfort nor support. He was also greatly disturbed
by the rumour that was now spreading round the
Court that the Princess was shortly to be affianced
to the King of Portugal. So, with more passion than
prudence, he urged Eleonore to seek a private in-
terview with her brother in his oratory during the
Feast of the Assumption, and to reveal the whcie

THE LETTER 295

matter, by imploring him to give his consent to
their marriage. Then, to stiffen the courage of his
lady, which he probably knew to be weak, he set him-
self— in his own words — to ‘ break her head ’ by the
multitude of his worrying letters. The most of these
seem to have been received in safety, but one was
fated to wreck the fortunes of its writer. * Ma mit,' it
ran, * I think that when the uncle [of Portugal] knows
what your will is in this business, he will have you
spoken to, to make you change your mind. Where-
fore be on your guard. Whatever may be the answer
that you wish to give, give it without further diffi-
culties, and without asking for fresh delays to ponder
the matter. It seems to me that it would be well for
you to declare to those who approach you on the
subject that your will is no otherwise than you have
already made known to the uncle. Ma mignonne, my
good and my ill lie in your hands. I do not say that
things have gone so far as many people dare to
declare. But so far have they gone, that if you do
not keep faith, even should I wish to remain in the
service, I should yet, from no fault of my own, be
dismissed. For this cause I beg you to have courage
for yourself and for me. It can be done if your wish
is to it. For I am ready, and I ask no other thing than
that I should be yours and that you should be mine.
The which I pray God and the Blessed Virgin to bring
about by the help of their grace and blessing. Ma
tme^ be not displeased if I break your head with so
many tiresome letters.’ *

This manly letter — ^the last sentences of which atone
for the slight and perhaps salutary sternness of
the remainder — was duly conveyed by a page to
Eleonore. ‘ Hiding it in her bosom behind gold and
precious jewels, she pressed it,’ writes Hubertus vrith
romantic sympathy, ‘ in the stead of the Palsgrave to

* This is taken from the original letter pressed in the fonds de
Summao, and ghren by Prof. Moeller in his life of Eleonore.
»e*sk*» is a litde difEerent. See Illustrative Notes, 54,

296 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

her heart (jnier Ula duo rotunda pomd)' until such
time as she could read it in some secret spot. But
the propitious moment never arrived. The Princess
had unfortunately entrusted one of her ladies-in- wait-
ing with the secret, and this woman now treacherously
revealed to the Chamberlain the existence of the paper.
Chifevres instantly opened the whole matter to his
master, placing the worst interpretation upon the tale
of love and enlarging upon the immense political ad-
vantages of an alliance with the King of Portugal.

Charles went at once to his sister, who had as yet
found no moment wherein to read the letter. To the
customary inquiry after her health she replied that
she was well. ‘ Yet meseems,’ retorted the King,
‘ that your bosom is more round than usual.’ Sa3dng
this, and placing his arm with brotherly solicitude
about her person, he plunged his hand into her dress
and seized the letter which lay there. Eleonore,
blushing to scarlet, sought to recover it. But Charles
retained possession of the unlucky document, and,
despite her indignant struggles, bore it away, declaring,
‘ I shall see what these things mean.’ He read it in
the company of Ckifevres and other ill-wishers of
Frederick, growing each moment more embittered by
their misleading interpretations.^ Pale with anger, he
concealed his feelings until alone in an inner chamber
with the two chief conspirators; but then, seizing
his dagger, which by reason of his youth he could
not yet rightly wield, he swore to run the Palsgrave
through.

Frederick was told of the terrible occurrence, yet,
driven by his love, went instantly to the Princess’s
lodgings in the Abbey. Everything seemed to be
quiet, but he was treated as a suspect by the guards
and with difficulty admitted. When he came to the

^ * Which letter the king found in my Lady Eleanor^s bosom him-
self saying that the said Count had shrewdly recompKensed him for
the good dioice that he hath had, to demand of his sister marri^e,
Wfc him privy,’ (Letter of Tunstal to Wolsey, August 27.^

DISGRACE 297

window where the lovers were accustomed to bid one
another good-night, Eleonore looked out and invited
him to enter, assuring him that there was no danger.
The Palsgrave, however, who knew better than she
the incriminating contents of the letter, replied that
the peril was great, and, wishing her a last good-night,
departed, sword in hand, to his dwelling, ‘ deeming each
one whom he met to be an assassin sent by Charles.'

Meanwhile the rumour had rushed round the Court,
and this was soon divided into two fiercely contending
parties. But the most of Frederick’s former flatterers
now ‘ reviled, abused, hated and despised him who but
a moment before they had so highly loved, honoured,
and esteemed.’ His lodgings, which formerly had
swarmed at meal-times like a bee-hive, appeared now
drad and desolate. His servants were shunned of all
men, and he himself sat with nor counsel nor courage,
unknowing whether to fly or stay. His page, the
confidant of his love, was at his wits’ end, thinking
only of the present and pressing danger, but the
worthy old steward, who had dealt with him so faith-
fully in the time of his prosperity, now exhorted him
to patience and a manly bearing. Nor was this
unnecessary, since it was even rumoured that his
master intended to punish him with imprisonment.
The Lady Eleonore also sat in her room weeping
tears of bitterness, and dosing her ears to the con-
solations of her women. She appears, however, to
have made up her mind, with a reasonable if unromantic
swiftness, that entire submission to her brother’s will
was now the only possible course.

Chifevres visited both the delinquents. To the
Princess, who roundly denied all the accusations that
ware brought against her, he was exceedingly gentle,
giving her the comfortable assurance that her brother
was inclined, on account of her so great youth, to
excuse her fault. But on the Palatine he poured the
fcdl measure of his revengeful scorn. He w^ amazed,
he d^dbred, that a noble of such inferior rank should

298 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

have dared to raise his eyes to one of the greatest
princesses of the earth, and no chastisement could be
too great for so gross a presumption. He brought with
him, moreover, Frederick’s condign dismissal from the
royal service, together with a prohibition from entering
Spain ; and so ‘ he left him with a sneering smile.’

Frederick was possessed, however, of one faithful
friend. This was his cousin, the Dowager Princess of
Orange, a woman of excellent sense and universal
respect. Hearing of the crisis, she went hot-foot to
Charles, only to find him in the company of Chibvres
and Lannoy, ‘who wore indeed a mourning counte-
nance, but in their innermost hearts were leaping for
joy at the fine outcome of their plan.’

The Princess reproached the King — who was after
all but a beardless boy * — with intrepidity and vigour.
‘ I hear with astonishment,’ she remarked, ‘ that your
Majesty proposes to bring the Palsgrave to shame
because of his love to your sister, although he has
deserved from you and your family so different a fate.’
Had not all in the Court known of this love for the
space of two years ? Had not the very children in the
streets sung of it ? Why then had the King not shown
opposition from the beginning ? And was it, after ail,
so great a crime for a young prince of noble race to
woo Eleonore in honourable love ? * Charles woixld
indeed be caught in a snare if he dared to put
Frederick in prison, for assuredly the power of the
Palsgraves of the Rhine was not yet so exhausted that
they could not revenge themselves. How could the
German princes ever again trust one who, though not

^ Beatis describes Charles as ‘ very young.* * Although he has a teg
and haggard face, and a hanging mouth which, when he is not think-
ing of it, he is wont to keep open, and though the underlip is always
underhung, yet his countenance gives the impression of dignity^ charm,
and the utmost majesty. He is very well grown, with long straight
kgs, not to be bettered in a man of his rank, and he has a good seat
m a horse.*

* *The said letter was but honest, concerning matters of love a®!
her marriage,* writes Spinelli to Henry VI 11, (Z, and P., voL i,

pt.S.)

DISGRACE 299

yet out of his fifteenth year, had ordained so cruel a
punishment for so light an offence ? By such a deed
he would bring to nothing all the plans of Maximilian,
who had so long wrought in secret to ensure the
succession of his grandson. ‘ See to it,’ she concluded,

‘ that you do not hereby open all too widely the door
of the Empire to the King of France, who yearns ever
thereafter.’

Charles at these words whispsered in the ear of
Chi6vres, who took the angry lady by the hand,
and, leading her on one side, spoke long and con-
fidentially ‘with bended head.’ It was absolutely
necessary, he told her, that the affection between the
Prince and his sister should be severed without delay.
First, because of the extreme importance, at this
juncture, of the alliance with Portugal. King Em-
manuel, being an old man, ‘humpbacked and crook-
legged, very like a monster,’ the Lady Eleonore would
certainly never marry him while so comely and upright
a bridegroom as the Palsgrave was to be had. Nor
would the king care to ally himself with a lady who
bore love to so goodly a young prince. The second
reason was concerned with the vexed question of the
succession to the Empire. The Palatinate was certain
to demand a very large sum in return for its influence ;
but if Frederick were disgraced, all claims would be
abandoned for the sake of regaining the Imperial favour.

The Princess of Orange answered nothing to these
chilly and calculating arguments, but sighed heavily
and withdrew. And a few days later, despairing of
success, she sent for the Palsgrave, and, with bitter
irony, counselled him to find in France a rich bride of
royal blood. Charles declined (or was not permitted)
to see his former friend,' but before his departure

• Accorxling: to Spindli the severity lay wholly with Claries, who
reftised to listen to representations of the ArcMucbess Margaret,
(Of Prinoe of Orange, and even of Chiivres faiinself. Tunstal is
less positive. The King would listen to no mtercessioo in the Count
Pnlatnie’s &voar, but iniether this was of his own _nund_ or not, he
cannot say. {L. mud P. wd. ii. pt iL)

300 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

bound him over not to take service under any other
master for the space of one year, to which, in the
hope of a speedy reconciliation and reunion with his
beloved, Frederick readily assented.

And now at length, in the second week of September,
the north wind blew, and the pilots, ‘ seeing that the
air was clear and the night filled with stars that
glistered,’ advised immediate departure. The whole
country-side was forthwith in a ferment. ‘ Each one
sought to convey his baggages on to the sea with as
much effort and as great diligence as when in a
burning house one runneth to water.’ All the pro-
visions of the fleet had already been devoured, whence
every vessel had to be completely re-victualled. But
in a few hours this was so abundantly accomplished
that long after the company arrived in Castile they
were still eating their fat Flemish stores in preference
to the meagre fare of Spain. The Princess Eleonore
was well guarded, with Madame de Chi^vres for her
lady of honour, on the King’s own ship, whose every
mast was topped with armings and slung with great
square banners, while all the sails, even to the
smallest, were painted on both sides with ‘many
goodly paintings and pious images ’ of such saints as
‘are often invoked against the perils and dangers of
the sea.’

Thus protected the fleet set forth, and ‘I dare to
say,’ boasts Vital, ‘that for the twelve days that the
King held the sea, he was, after God and the saints, its
lord and master, reducing all that he met and found to
his obedience.’ The ships followed him ‘gaily and
bravely ’ in two' long wings, ‘ even as one may often
have seen storks flying.’ Nor was it a light matter to
behold this armament — ‘ some forty great and mighty
vessels, the best that could be found whether in
Castile, France, England or elsewhere, seeming at a
distance no other than castles on the water’ — ^thus
striding the sea to Spain. ‘ Verily, it was a triumphant
thing to 500 theso ships clearing and metering the

BANISHMENT 301

water, and passing more swiftly onward than a horse
at full pace.’ Yet Laurent himself was forced later to
acknowledge that there was a world of mystery
beyond the jurisdiction of even this ‘gentle and
mighty sovereign,’ and when the royal huntsman
caught two dolphins, fashioned in all ways like unto
humans, ‘ I truly believe,’ he says humbly, ‘ that in the
sea there is abundance of infinitely admirable things,
whereof God alone hath knowledge.’

Thus, therefore, was Frederick left desolate. ‘ The
lovely young Princess, with her goodly grace — so
affable that all which she did became her, and she was
a pleasure to hear and behold ’—was swept off to Spain,
and from thence to the crooked arms of the aged
Emmanuel, already twice her uncle.^ ‘ And in this
powerful kingdom she utterly forgot the Palsgrave.
So gjrievous an ending had the love of these two.’

Frederick himself turned his face sadly towards
prosaic Germany, while Charles, the youthful tyrant,
obtained his first recognition as a ruler of men in the
high Court of European diplomacy. * Upon this his
constancy into a like affair,' wrote Spinelli to
Henry VIII., ‘many do conject in him good stomak
and couraggy, and how that he shall not lightly
fiwget the offences, and how he will be fast in his
determynacions, and much extime the honnor of the
worlde.’ *

Yet the romance, though in abeyance, was by no
means at an end.

Ill

For a time, then, Frederick’s wanderings ceased, and
he spent a disconsolate year in the seclusion of the
Palatinate, administering the inheritance that had

* Emattnoel * the Fortanate ’ had mamed two auots of Charies V. :
Iwlidla aad Maria, dat^ters of Ferdmaod aitd IsabeBa. ‘ A stiange
nedey of relatioBS,’ as Peter Heylyn woold say.

> JL mtdP. Homy VIIl^ roi. it. pt. E

302 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

fallen to him at his father’s death and attending to the
education of three young and fatherless nephews.*
But fate had not destined him to a resting life, and
he soon reappears at the Court of Maximilian, basking
once more in the full sunshine of Imperial favour.
The Emperor, chivalrous and romantic to the last,
wholly dissociated himself from his grandson’s cold-
blooded act. ‘ We are brothers of one Order, the
Golden Fleece,’ he declared, ‘ and it is my will that we
should draw yet nearer to one another in friendship,
yea, that we should establish between us an indissoluble
bond of love.’

It must be admitted that this gracious geniality did
not spring solely from the swift impulse of a generous
heart, and that Maximilian, the penniless ‘ king of
kings,'* whose position of impotent and penurious
glory is one of the greater ironies of history, thoroughly
realised the importance to the house of Hapsbufg of
the powerful house of Wittelsbach. It was not long,
indeed, before the Emperor’s ‘ most secret secretary ’
was judiciously probing the views of his guest, and
Thomas’s account of the interview gives an interesting
glimpse of the internal diplomacies necessary to the
overlord of this strange congeries of forces so curiously
termed an Empire.

Having begun by assuring Frederick that Maximilian
had had no part nor lot in the recent unfriendly
behaviour of Charles, the secretary went on to remind
him of a conversation that had taken place shortly
after the death of Philip, in which the Emperor had
spoken pathetically of his age, his poverty, and his

^ See Illustrative Notes, 55.

* The King of France, he was wont himself to declare, was a king oC
asses, because his subjects would bear any burden he imposed upon
them ; the King of Spam a king of men, since they only obeyed him In
what was reasonable ; the King of England a king of angels, fca: he
commanded them but what was just and fair, whereas they, on their
sid^ obeyed him willingly and rightly. But the Emperor he called
a king of kings, * because they obey us when they please.' (Vehse.)
Peter Heylyn, in telling^ the anecdote, calls the King of England rex
^tedfahruniy * because of his subjects' often insurrections.'

IMPERIAL DIPLOMACY 303

desire to lay down the intolerable burden of the State,
and had begged the Palsgrave to suggest a suitable
successor. ‘ Speak, my dear friend,’ he had concluded,
‘as if my life were already at an end; what German
prince would you choose, who could, from his own
resources, defray the expenses of the Empire? I
myself know of no one suitable, save the Elector
Frederick of Saxony or Duke William of Bavaria.’

The Palsgrave, who quickly realised the point of the
conversation, had hastened to reply that, for his part,
he knew of one strong enough and worthy enough to
take upon him the heaviest of burdens. ‘ “ Who is
that? who is that ?” ’ asked Maximilian, ‘ repeating his
words, as he was wont to do when he particularly
wanted to know something'; and hereupon Frederick,
with courtly zeal, had suggested the name of the
Imperial grandson, Charles of Austria, ‘ who deserves
the lordship not only of this German Empire, but of
the whole world.’ ‘ He would have added a good deal
more,’ continues Hubertus, had not the Emperor
‘r^arded him so sternly and angrily that the veins
stood out in his neck, and exclaimed ; “ If you are in
earnest in what you say, I can only suppose that you
care neither for me, nor for my house, nor for my
grandson, and particularly wish us all to go to the
bottom together.* How can you desire that my grand-
son should take upon him a burden under which I
have been almost crushed, and for whose sake my
forefathers have thrust their princely house into such
debts that we can scarce win free? The Imperial
dignity is regarded as a mighty gloiy; yet it is but
the shadow of an empire, whence cometh neither profit
nor honour, and nothing save the mockery of the
people.”’*

As the Emperor seemed so gravely displeased,
Frederick had abstained from replying, though he saw
well enough, adds the annalist humorously, that his

^ ‘ Ftinditus perditos pwupere,’

* See Illustrative Note%

304 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

suzerain’s anger arose not from any objection to seeing
the Archduke Charles raised to the throne, but from
annoyance at having his private thoughts thus dragged
to the light. ‘ For the Emperor Maximilian ever
imagined that his plans would be frustrated if any one
else were of the same opinion with him.’ As a matter
of fact several gentlemen of the Court had come later
to the offender, explaining this characteristic of their
master, and counselling him to be in no way dis-
turbed.

All this the secretary now recalled to Frederick’s
mind, rehearsing even the anger of Maximilian at the
Palsgfrave’s unexpected and unwelcome suggestion.
‘ Yet,’ he continued blandly, ‘ so soon as the Emperor
had returned to Austria, and thought over your words,
he said to himself: Palsgrave Frederick is certainly
young, but he is also very sensible and cannot wish
evil to me and mine ; and since he is not accustomed
to speak words of flattery, he cannot assuredly have
said this without special cause. Now I the Emperor
am undoubtedly old, and should have become wise by
experience; but how if it were with me as the
common proverb hath it ; that in his own affairs no
man is clever, but rather exceedingly blind ? ’ So the
arguments in favour of Charles were brought forward
in overwhelming abundance, and the certain disaster
of any alternative election painted in the most lurid
colours. ‘ And on whom,’ was the moving conclusion,
‘ if not on me, Maximilian, would the blame be laid,
that I for my own selfish profit had neglected what
might serve the common good ? No longer should I
be regarded as a pious Emperor.’

The Palsgrave, in short, was undoubtedly the man
who could most clearly foresee and provide for the
best interests of the Empire, he alone and unassisted —
inspired without doubt from heaven — having dis-
covered the means of salvation for Germany. And on
this dreamlike foundation was builded an airy castle,
that would have taken a harder heart than Frederick’s

IMPERIAL DIPLOMACY 305

to destroy. ‘ So the good Prince gave assurance that
he was still of the same way of thinking, and ready to
do all for the honour and elevation of the House of
Austria, and especially in the matter of procuring the
Imperial honour for King Charles ; and that no one
was to dream for a moment that because of the events
of Middelburg he was not well disposed to him. He
knew himself that the guilt lay not with King Charles,
but with the enviers and ill-wishers of the Court,’
Frederick was hereupon summoned to the presence of
his suzerain, who came the whole length of the room
to meet him, took him by the right hand, and led him
along, thanking him for his good-will, and declaring
that he would ever regard him as the first and most
distinguished of his friends.

Here, then, was Frederick once more on the top of
the wave. Yet, as before, his exaltation was as brief
as it was brilliant ; for, only a few months after these
genial assurances had been given, Maximilian was
lying in the coffin which had been for so long the
companion of his travels, and Germany was the
poorer, if not of a consummate ruler, at least of a
pilot and a friend.^ ‘ And I need not say,’ comments
Hubertus, ‘how sorely Palsgrave Frederick grieved
thereat ; for fate had again broken his loveliest hopes
in their flowering.’

The prospect certainly seemed gloomy enough, for
now again the vindictive Charles was master of
Frederick’s fate. But the position of affairs was
wholly altered since the days of Middelburg, and the
good-will of the Palatinate was even more necessary
to Charles than to Maximilian. The Holy Roman
Crown was, so to speak, at auction, and the bidding
was as lively as it was various. The Kings of both
France and England were competing; not a few of

* ‘ He was a good prince/ declared the famous French captain,
Fleurange, * and he wakened Christianity. If he could not perform a
himself, at least he showed the way to others.’ ‘ He possesses
tibe ccmMence of the nation more than any of his predecessors for a
himdied wrote Francesco Vettori, the Florentine ambassador.

306 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

the German princes had personal hopes and ambitions ;
while many, even of Charles’s own household and*
family, were inclined to support the candidature of
his brother Ferdinand. Soon, therefore, the hand of
friendship and honour was held out to Frederick, and
in an autograph letter^ he was promised a warmer
favour than in even the happiest moments of the past
So the Palsgrave, who was a guileless soul, and
really loved both his Charles and the House of
Austria, forgave the harsh arrogance of his dismissal,
and strove loyally and to the utmost in their behalf,
even stealing into Frankfort in disguise — an unpre-
cedented act of hardihood— for the purpose of keeping
the princes, and especially his brother, to their pledges.
It was, in fact, owing in no small degree to his
exertions that the election of Charles V. was at last
successfully accomplished, and he it was who was
sent by the Electors, with all the glorious circ um stance
that a travelling allowance of 24,000 gold florins could
procure, to bear the news to Spain.

Frederick found Charles at Molin del Rey, where
the new Emperor had taken refuge from the plague
that had broken out in Barcelona ; and so perfect was
now the reconciliation between the two princes that
for the next many months they were inseparable
companions. Together they journeyed about Castile
and Aragon, attended the Cortes at Compostella, and
paid their devotions to the shrine of St. Jam«.
Together they took ship at Corunna, landed at Dover,
rode to Canterbury, and (on Whit Monday, May 20,
1520) participated in the great banquet prepared in
the Archbishop’s Palace by King Henry VIII. and
Queen Catherine of Aragon.* And together they

* In a letter to the Regent Margaret, dated Barcelona, February 22,
1519, Charles expresses the hope that the two good letters, whkh
he has written with his own hand to the Count Palatine Frederick,
will incline him and his brother to persevere in the promise winch
they have made.

* Frederick is reported by a Venetian eye-witness of this

to have been privileged to present the towel^ when the three Majesties
wa^ied then: hands in the same gold basin ; and to have been pahed

LOCUMTENENS C^ESARIS MAJESTATIS 307

crossed from Sandwich to Flushing, foregathered once
more with the English sovereigns at Calais, and
passed summer days in perhaps not unhumorous
reminiscence amid the once familiar haunts of the
Netherlands. With Charles, finally, Frederick went
to Ais-la-Chapelle to play his lesser part in the great
ceremony of coronation, that formed the splendid
outcome of his own not insignificant labours on his
friend’s behalf. This entire journey was, however,
one of state and diplomacy, pertaining more to the
history of the Emperor and of Europe than to that
of the Palsgrave, and Hubertus accordingly hurries
on to a more congenial theme.

The most important result of Frederick’s renewed
favour was his appointment as Imperial Statthalter, or
President of the Council of Regency, in conjunction
with the Archduke Ferdinand, who, it was said, was
still too young and too ignorant of German to fill the
post alone. For the better furtherance of his new
duties, Frederick took up his residence in NQremberg,
where the Council had for the time being its abode.
Now this city — ^the NQremberg of Albrecht DQrer*
and Hans Sachs — ^was famous, even in that pleasure-
loving age, for its pleasures, and, to the genial and
gregarious prince, it soon became a very Circean
Island of joy. Affable to all the world, to the ladies
he was flame-warm. ‘ Not once did he resist the
blandishments of any female.' Daily he was invited

at table with a daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. The feast
itself was cheerfiil. Behind all the ladies’ chairs stood enamoured
TtM^hs (giffvem inaamoraii), who ‘played the lovers’ part so bravely,
diat nothing could have been better {nifai supra),’ one of them
aoaidng love with such lively zeal that be was finally carried out in
a swoon. The eating lasted for four hours, after which the company
danced The Gloves of Spain, ‘ with a very gay finale to the sound
of the fife,’ till daylight dawned. {State Peepers, Venetian, vcd. iiL, and
C& Banmgarten.)

' It was now that Albrecht Durer drew the portrait of the Palsgrave
that feces page 372. For a description cS. the city and its ‘ unzalbar
benser,’ see Hans Sacl^ delightful Lodspruck der Stott Number ^ :

"... Sn bitoKkr roseagart,

Deo Got ihm s^ier hat bewait.'

3o8 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

to splendid festivities, which the burgher beauties,
living in idleness and superfluity, knew well how to
make attractive. And daily there came many lovely
damsels to his mansion. * But truly,’ adds Hubertus
in extenuation, ‘the ladies of Nuremberg were so well
practised and exercised in such matters that [like the
ladies of Spain] they could have moved the very
rocks.’ ^ In any case Frederick soon became so ex-
ceedingly popular that there was no one — the citizens
themselves declared — ‘no man, no woman, no child,
who did not esteem and love him even to the point
of worship ; while to hear the common folk speak of
him was verily an amazement. And they thanked
God aloud that He permitted such a sovereign to
hold court in their city, which had hitherto lain as
though in sleep, and been concerned with naught
save commerce and usury ; whereas now, through his
presence, they were awakened and ready to be jo3duL’
At Christmastide he took part in their maskeries,
and, thrusting aside all serious thought, ‘ gave himself
over, as Hannibal in Capua, to delights.’ Finally his
brother, the Elector, came to visit him, and the city
went mad with joy. The streets swarmed with the
populace, which was allowed, for the diversion of the
Palsgraves, to take its pleasure where it would.
Butchers, tanners, spicers, cooks — all went hither and
thither, in silken dresses and golden chains, dancing
singing and leaping. The most marvellous banquets
were arranged.* And the Princes never noticed that,
by these artifices, the Nurembergers were drawing all
their money to themselves. Moreover, this further
and greater misfortune befell Frederick, ‘ that in the
midst of his joy (as he fancied it) at being so loved of
all men, unwittingly he was himself also wounded by

^ When Heinz von Rambach writes to Friedrich of Brandenbaijg
to complain that the Elector has given a had character of him to his
wife : ‘Now had I behaved/ he adds, ‘ as did your Grace at Nuremberg
with the apothicaress, the iace-makeress, and many other ladies . ♦ .
you might well have called me names/ {Privatbriefe,)

* Cf* Oberhorst, NUrnberg^s VolksbelusHgungen, Leipzig, 1876,

SCOURGES OF GERMANY 309

the dart of love for a certain lovely lady, and it
becomes me not to say how much she cost him, and
how many banquets by day and night he was fain to
give her, before she yielded.’

The Palsgrave’s exchequer g^ew, in consequence,
exceedingly empty, and to replenish it the most of
his lands and properties soon passed into the clutches
of the said merry wives’ usurious husbands. Added
to this, difficulties both of dignity and of responsibility
were constantly arising between himself and his
coadjutor the Archduke Ferdinand.^ So, all things
considered, he shortly deemed it wise to relinquish
his uneasy honours, and to retire to such of his lands
as remained to him.

Frederick now entered upon a somewhat gloomy
period of his career, for the next two or three years
were mainly passed in praiseworthy but not very
successful endeavoure to check the devastations and
remedy the disasters of those two scourges of Southern
Germany, the War of the Knights and the War of the
Peasants. Even his lighter moments, moreover, were
occupied by the unhilarious task of improving his
fellow-men, since this was the moment when the less
riotous princes of the Empire were awaking to the
drawbacks of what Coryat calls the ‘ noble carowsing ’
of their nation.

Germany, in fact, had become the helpless and
sodden prey of the habit of ‘ equal-drinking.’ Men,
women and children, none were exempt from the
melancholy duties of the circling bumper. Parents,
it was declared, shook wine over their babies in the

* Sandoval gives a cmious account of Ferdinand in his youth : * He
woold bear Hardship, could dissemble, iov*d Hunting, was a strict
Observer of |ustice and Truth, but no way generous ; affected some
as painting, graving, and above all casting, partkulariy of great
trying of them. He delighted to hear History read,
e^c^y Feats cf Arms ; was so bold that he fear'd nothing ; would eat
too much ; delighted in mad People and strange Birds ; was rather
weak than strong, and had such witty expressions when a Child that
aHper^ms admir'd him, ytt when grown up a Man he had n<^hing
of It.'

310 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

cradle, lest these should be backward in learning their
liquid lesson ; and the smallest schoolboy was ex-
pected to be a ‘ strong and invincible professor ’ in the
art. ‘ Every country has its own devil,’ said Luther :
‘our German devil is a good bottle of wine, and is
called Swill.’

So certain princes, including the Palsgraves of the
Rhine, set out gallantly on the road to reform. If no
man was to be forbidden the privilege of drink, at
least no man should be forced to share that privilege
against his will. A splendid entertainment in the
form of a crossbow contest, such as the souls of
Germans loved,^ was arranged at Heidelberg, and
there — in the ‘ lovely great meadow behind the city
wall, looking to the mountains ’ — twenty princes and
innumerable nobles and burghers were put to contend
for prizes. And it was under these amiable and in-
vigorating conditions that the regulations were drawn
up. ‘ It was ordained,’ says Hubertus, ‘ that from
thenceforward equal full-drinking should no longer
be esteemed, and that no man should exact it from
another whether by challenging with a whole or half
bumper, by words or by nods, or by any other sign
soever ; that contrariwise every one should be free to
take to himself so much as his nature demanded.'

The regulations were exceedingly strict, and for a
time there was a certain improvement in the districts
governed by the princes who were present.* But it
was a forlorn and fleeting hope. ‘ It was verily a holy
ordinance,’ concludes old Thomas, ‘ and it is a disgrace
that a man should have to write for how short a time

^ * The Germans have a commendable exercise of shooting at a butt
with crosbowes and harquebuzes. For which sport the better sorte
and their very princes with them . . . meete upon sett dayes * . .
The place where they shoote is an open terras covered over the h^d,
the butt lying open uncovered. • . . And howsoever the butt at winch
they shoote be large, with much earth cast up behynde it, yet my s^
at Heydelberg (saw) divers wounded with shaftes and bulletts stnne-
tymes missing the butt, and then by casualty hitting thexm’ {Skak^
Eur^^

^ Cl Voigt

THE FAR PRINCESS 31 1

it was maintained. But this evil vice of drinking is so
deeply implanted in the Germans, that naught can
remedy it. Yea, it has come to this, that to drink well
and strongly is looked upon no more as a vice but as
an honour, and whoso does not join will at feasts be
well mocked and laughed at, even as, in days of yore
with the Milesians, he was of no account who acted
with uprightness.’ It must be added, indeed, that,
according to the worthy annalist's ovra account, the
princes themselves were but half-hearted in the
matter, for with admirable candour he adduces another
and most cogent reason for their sudden zeal for
reform : ‘ that it should not be said that so much was
expended for play alone, and to prevent the folk from
sa3dng (as they already did) that it was incredible that
so many princes should come together for no other
purpose than diversion.’ *

Meanwhile the Palsgrave had a dearer preoccupa-
tion. For his thoughts were again intent on the
Lady Eleonore. During all these years he had kept
an alert eye on the failing health of ‘ the monster of
Porti^al ’ : and now at length Emmanuel had suitably
deceased. It was suggested, too, that not only might
his far Princess be still inclined towards him, and her
brother find a more lenient mood, but also that, where
once she had been poor, now she was rich.

All this relit in Frederick’s breast ‘ the glimmering
fkme ’ of bis youthful passion, and, hastily casting to
the winds all thought of the lovely lady of Nttremberg,
be wrote the famous letter of appeal that gained for
him the services of the clerkly Hubertus. He had first,
indeed, sought the aid of ‘ that excellent man Tetanius
Frisius, who was doctor in both faculties, and assessor
of the Imperial Chamber of Justice ' ; but this dignitary
had prov^ but a broken reed, and Thomas had been

* See Qfastiathre Notes, 57.

312 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

summoned in his stead. ‘So I hastened propero to
Nttremberg,’ declares the annalist, filled with a pleasant
sense of his own importance, ‘and so soon as the
Prince was aware of me he gave me his hand and bade
me welcome.’ Frederick postponed the important
task for a few days, bidding Hubertus meanwhile to
‘make good cheer.’ At length, however, the matter
was expounded, and the document composed.

But in vain was the net spread for that dainty bird ;
‘ in vain was the letter sent to Spain and to Eleonore.’
For although one royal impediment had been removed,
another had appeared to take his place. Francis 1.
had been made prisoner at Pavia ; and on this reluctant
monarch Charles had determined to bestow his
widowed sister’s hand.^ ‘She, for her part,’ writes
Hubertus, not without bitterness, ‘ was anxious only
to be once more called a queen.’ It had been an ex-
cellent plan, ‘ only that nothing came of it.’

The Palsgrave, unaware of the new complication,
decided to set out in person for Spain, to renew and
press his suit with the Emperor, and with this intent
he started from Heidelberg at Eastertide of the year
1526. But in France Frederick heard rumours of the
projected marriage, and soon the distressing intelli-
gence was confirmed by the newly released prisoner
and bridegroom-elect in person. For at Amboise the
Palsgrave learned that Francis, having ‘ runne without
stay’* from the hated Spanish frontier, was staying
with his mother, Louise of Savoy, at Cognac ; ® and he

^ Eleonore had already been promised by Charles to the Ccfi-
stable of Bourbon, as the price of his treachery. That a match
between her and Frederick had been regarded as possible and evtsn
advisable is shown by a letter from Gasparo Contarini to the Council
of Ten. The Archbishop of Capua, he writes on December 4, 1524,
* suggested another marriage to the emperor, for the adjustment ^
aifeurs in Germany, and said it would be well to marry Eleanor, Queen
Dowser of Portugal, the promised wife of Bourbon, to the Count
Palatine Frederick, who was in Spain of yore,’ {Staie Fc^ers^
VemUa^ voL iii.)

* Guicciardini’s Historie^ tr. by Sir Geofhrey Fenton, 1579.

* The legend runs that Francis was unexpectedly bom under m
cim-tree at Cognac.

FRANCIS I 313

at once determined to procure an audience from his
royal rival. Owing to the immense throng assembled
to welcome the prodigal his reception had to be post-
poned for a week, but Francis sent him greetings of
the most friendly character, and placed at his disposal
a neighbouring castle.

In point of fact, the King was busily occupied in
concocting a new alliance against the Emperor, in
direct contravention of the Treaty of Madrid. But of
this the travellers knew nothing, and Francis is
described as wholly engaged in the pious duty of
healing the scrofulous by the application of the royal
finger. Now this faculty was the special prerogative
of the sovereigns of France, bestowed, as Hubertus
tells, on an early wearer of the dignity by a grateful
saint ; and, at the time of the year when the illness was
most common, the French King was bound to fast for
four days, cleanse himself so far as might be from sin-
ful stains, partake each morning of the Holy Sacra-
ment, and then heal such sick as kneeled before him.
The cure was accomplished by the simple act of
touching the diseased necks in the form of a cross :
‘the which, for good or evil, I hold for incontro-
vertible,’ inteijects Hubertus, who, as usual, regards the
matter from a practical point of view, 'since Royal
Majesty would not undertake the thing, if it did not
duly come about’ ^ ‘And this reminds me,' he pre-
sently adds with genial sarcasm, ‘ of how the kings of
England always wish to imitate those of France.’
Despite an enmity so bitter and so constant between
the two nations that the English were wont to set
up instead of the target a counterfeit Frenchman,
teaching the boys to shoot off their arrows with the
words, ‘Ye must learn well how to hit the French,’*
yet was England always striving to resemble and

* See IHostrative Notes, 58,

* Les gens de ceste nation bayent k mort !es Frangoys, comma

ksnrs viek ennemis et du tout nous appeli^^t cAmesve Frcmce

qui est k dire maranltz Fran90is, dblens Francois, et autrement
ncms ai^iient or sm^ vilains ik de pntains . , . l! me desplait que

314 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

outdo her rival. The English kings, therefore, feeling
that it was incumbent upon them to cure something,
professed to have received from God the peculiar
power of healing cramp in the sinews, merely by the
blessing and bestowing of rings of gold and silver.
‘ And I only wonder why, since they give themselves
out to be kings of France as well, they do not set
about healing the scrofulous also, and thus verily
establish their claim to the French throne.’

Disappointment does not seem to have hindered the
affectionate intercourse of the two princes, and, when
the healing was at an end, an amiable interview took
place. The King declared himself to be immeasurably
glad at his release from Spain. ‘ I do not believe,’ he
complained, ‘ that there is a more unfriendly people
under the sun.’ Not for one moment had they left
him free or unwatched, spying night and day ‘ through
peep-holes, to see that he had neither too little nor too
much.’ Verily, death would be preferable to a return
thither. He trusted that his sons would soon be sent
after him, together with his bride, who, he added
sardonically, had far better have been married to the
Palsgrave. And he begged ‘ his cousin,’ so soon as he
should have reached the Emperor, to do his utmost
to further this matter. Francis, in fact, regarded
Eleonore with extreme disfavour, though, to recover
his sons, he was ready, as his own ministers declared,
to marry the Emperor’s mule. Frederick stayed
in the castle for some days, and was then escdrted
out of France ‘ no otherwise than were he the King
himself.’

The first stage of their journey took the travellers to
Blaye, where rested the bones of the great Roland,

CCS vilains estans en leur pays nous crachent k la face, et eubc cstans
4 la France, on les honnore et revere comme petis dieux: en ce les
Frangois se monstrent francs de coeur et nobles d'esperit/ (Perlin.)

* Towards the French they entertain not one kindly sentiment of
^ood will ; but from some natural disposition, being very hostilely
di^osed, they are animated towards them with private and pubik
l^ssgs of enmity.* (Nicander Nucius.)

INTO SPAIN 315

first Palsgrave of the Rhine. ‘Now King Francis,’
says the annalist, ‘ is a friend of antiquities, and on his
recent return from imprisonment, he descended into
the vaults, where Roland and Oliver, * and between
them the holy Romanus, rest in a not very large
grave, in order to discover whether Roland was
really of such great length of body as the legend
declares. He commanded that a piece should be cut
out of the tomb-stone, gazed within, and had it at
once closed up again with chalk. Nor did he vouch-
safe one word, that it might not appear that he had
undertaken this thing in vain.’ Frederick, hearing of
the exploit, was also seized with a desire to learn
whether the bones of the hero really fitted their
tomb. So the party went secretly by night and,
re-opening the soft chalk hole in the side of the
sarcophagus, looked in. But the giant limbs of
rumour— shinbones three feet long at the least — had
dwindled to a tiny heap of dust scarce two fists high,
no single bone whereof loomed larger than a finger.*
‘And we laid them all together again, as they had
been before, and laughed at the ignorance or shameless
mendacity of the monks.’

To avoid a heart-rending encounter with Eleonore,
who was about to enter France, the Palsgrave
determined to penetrate Spain by way of ‘ the Gascony
deserts ' ; and in Bayonne he made preparations as
for a journey into the wilderness, purchasing, says
Hubertus complacently, ‘ all manner of cooking
sq>paratus, tables and benches, pots and pans, spits
and saucepans, and all things soever that pertain to
cooking.’ The annalist also prudently provided him-
self, for a small sum, with a carp weighing six-and-
thirty pounds, which he fastened on to the back of
a mvde, ‘ and in all my life I have never eaten a better

* C£ page 61.

* I>o® Qaijcote would seem therefore to have been in the right,
whem descrilntig Roland {seen ‘ with these very eyes ^ bs * of ^ meane

broad-shonkired, scHziewhat bow-l^^ed, Aboiame-bearded,

body hayrie, and his lodkes tltmatnlng?

3i6 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

tasting fish.’ Thus furnished, they struck out boldly
for ‘ the unfriendly land ’ of Spain, and fared forward
through a hot and barren country, suffering by the
way many grim and discomfortable adventures, upon
which the chronicler dwells with complacent and self-
pitying emphasis.

In fact, the Palsgrave and his party were now to
discover the difference between travelling on royal
businesses and travelling on the resources of a private
gentleman.* If Hubertus had complained before of
a certain scarcity of luxuries, he now bewails the
absence of every most ordinary need. Vinegar and
olive-oil were, he declares, the only condiments
obtainable at the inns, while the horses were starved
on barley alone. All the cooking and service had,
moreover, to be done by themselves, since no Spaniard
would lift a finger to assist them. For bedding
they thankfully snatched at straw, and for i».ths
they surreptitiously — and seven at a time — ^splashed
within the narrow precincts of a wine-jar. The
mountains, too, were so steep that all had to climb
on foot, lest worse befall them ; ‘ and we wondered
greatly how, two years ago, the French soldiers had
been able to come through and bring with them
great pieces of artillery, and we saw upon the
heights many pieces broken and burst’ The district
of Pampeluna yielded them nothing but the unburied
bones of Frenchmen who had been killed in the
recent war.

In the towns they seem to have fared slightly
better, though even here their hours were often

‘ ‘ It is astonishing how dear travelling is in this country. As mueh
is asked for giving you house-room and for the ruydo de la casa or tto
noise you make as would purchase a good supper and lodgings in
the best inns, in most other parts of Europe.’ (Swinburne’s Thawak.)
‘These inns are sad spectacles, and the sight of them gives _<Mie a
belly full. The fire is made on a hearth m the middle erf the Kitcbk,
clmfced with so thick a smoke, that you would think your self in the
Kennel of a Fox that the Hunters would drive out : a man or woimi
aB fit rag^ like a beggar, and no less lowsie, measures the wisB ta
yno.’ (Van Aarssens.)

THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 317

hazardous. At Cervera the authorities requested
them to make no long stay, lest the bread and wine
of the community should run short, and ‘I verily
believe,’ adds Hubertus, * they feared that so soon as
food failed us we should devour themselves, for when
they saw how many and various meats were prepared
for so few people, they ran together from all sides,
and thronged almost by force into the house to see us
eat’ At Matalebres they found all the inhabitants,
men, women, maidens and children, stark naked,
scourging and lashing at one another’s shoulders to
appease a wrathful Providence and attract the tardy
rain. And, since together with the Prince’s arrival
there came the first drops of blessed moisture that
had fallen for seven months, the party was regarded
as the gift of God, and nourished with cherries and
partridges. In a town called Gomorra (Gomara ?), to
help their appetites, which were fainting from the
heat, they sought to buy a mule-load of butter; but
were told that so much existed not in all Castile.
‘ What could you use it for ? ’ asked the spicer
{aromatarius) wondering ; and when he presently
produced his entire stock — a goat’s-bladder filled with
repulsive grease — he explained that in that country
butter was regarded merely as an excellent remedy
for dressing sores.* In another little townlet there
was such a lack of wood for firing that Hubertus
and the cook, to make a blaze, tried to extract a beam
from the woodwork of the ancient church. The roof,
aghast at such sacrilege, at once fell in, and the
adventurous couple barely escaped with their lives.
Once the party invited their landlord to dinner, and
fed him so generously that the indignant wife haled

* * Thanks to Heaven, Lent is over, and though I only observed
the Passion-week, yet that was more tedious to me than a whole Lent
Ic^ at Paris, for there is no butter here ; that little which you meet
wirii is brought about thirty leagues off, wrapped up like sausages in
hogs* bladders. It is full of worms, and very dear.’ (D'Auinoy.)
Even in the eighteenth century, when King Charles III. wished to
enjoy the pkasures a dairy, the cows had to be fetched in carts
fim Holl^d. (Swinburne-)

3i8 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

them before the authorities on a charge of poisoning.
And another host, with Biblical predilections, stuffed
his silver goblet into a chest and thereafter accused
them of theft.^ On one occasion they had an excellent
repast of venison smoked and salted, and a ‘ very pale
wine as cold as ice.’ Making the most of so rare and
glorious an occasion, they were thirstily crying for
more when a servant informed them that it came
from ‘ a little pond hard by full of serpents, by whose
natural coldness it was that the wine was thus re-
freshed.’ And hereupon, although it was already past
midnight, the Palsgrave stood up and departed from
that venta. Nor was this their most grievous dis-
illusionment, for when Hubertus, who had stayed
behind, read through the bill, he discovered the
disturbing item ; so much for the donkey. * “ Donkey,”
I asked, “what donkey?” “Why, the donkey that
your excellencies had for supper,” he replied. “ What,*
I cried, “that was donkey?” “Why, yes," he said,
“how else should we get venison in these desolate
parts?’” And hereupon he opened the door of a
cupboard and displayed with pride the fine haunch
of a new-killed ass. ‘ “ This is our sport,” he ex-
plained; “we chase them with dogs, and think
them excellent.”’ When Frederick, who had not
only eaten freely of the curious food but also
carried off a large supply, learned the bitter news,
his stomach turned within him. The remains were
cast into the ditch, and no more did the party touch
venison: a precaution that was probably wise on
other grounds, since Hubertus adds that it was the
custom in this region to hunt game with poisoned
arrows.

* This seems to have been a favourite practice in Southern £urope.
Compare the beautiful story in the Golden Legend of the two pilgrims
to Compostella, whose host put a cup of silver in their malle, then
dragged them to judgment. The son was hanged, and the father
weht weeping on his pilgrimage. But when he returned a mmith
later he found the boy still alive and well, ‘fedde wythswetenes of
Htevea,’ and the people of the city, wondering, hung the innkeeper.
of Si. James the More.)

THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 319

When they reached the valley of the Guadiana the
heat became so great * that the Palsgrave lay down in
the first venta that he could find, and sent forward his
secretary and his butler to spy out the land. The
way was long, the sun was blazing, the flask was
empty, and there was no leaf or blade of grass to be
seen. The butler was falling from his horse with
exhaustion. ‘Lay me by the side of the road,’ he
said, ‘ that the Prince, when he rides by, may see and
beautifully bury me.’ Hubertus, gazing anxiously
around, discovered an ancient wall with one mulberry-
tree growing out of it, and painfully dragged himself
and his comrade thither. They ate greedily of the
berries, ‘and so were we again strong and cheerful,
and thanked God and the mulberry-tree. And I have
ever since held this fruit in great esteem, and acknow-
ledge that I owe my life to it’ With commendable
thoughtfulness he wrote a little note for the Palsgrave,
and placed it between two stones in the road, that he
also might find this tree of life and be refreshed : the
which duly occurred.

To increase their comfort, the two explorers now
gathered handfuls of wayside blossoms, and placed
them ‘in Cierman fashion’ — for might they not be
luck-flowers? — in their hats. But by so doing they
ran a graver danger than they realised till later, for,
symbolically enough, many of these flowers of Spain
were of the most deadly poison : as the ‘ lovely scarlet
blossoms’ of the wolfsbane, sprung from the bloody
foam of ‘ the hell-hound Cerberus, when pursued of
old by Hercules through this neighbourhood ’ ; or that

^ This was the famous year of heat in Spain, of which Navagero
complained : ‘At the end of March and during April I ha-re fou^ it
hotter here than in Italy during July and August.* ‘ It had not rained
for ten months,* adds Hubertus. When a traveller, writes Howell,
‘sees tl^ same San which only cherisheth and gently warmes his
CooBtrey men, halfe parboyle and tanr^ other people, and those rays
which scorch the adusted soyles of Cadabria and S|^ne, only varnish
and guild the green hon^-suckled plaines and hillocks of England :
at Ms retume iKjtne, hec will blesse God, and love England better
em* after.*

320 THE adventures OE A PALSGRAVE

strange and suggestive herb called delfa^ ‘whose
flower has the colour of the flower of the peach and
its leaves are like unto the iris, and within the flower
is a small black grain like to a false grain of wheat :
the which herb is the most beautiful in the world, but
it is mortal’ When the peasants saw the travellers
wearing these trophies, ‘ they ran from afar,’ pulled
them from their horses, and rubbed their hats with
earth.

At length the weary company arrived in the pleasant
landscape of Granada, where, in perfect contrast to
their recent wanderings, they found water in abun-
dance, and such a paradise of fruit-trees that ‘ scarce
might the sky be seen through the foliage.’ As for
the city itself, its very name was a mystery, for ‘ some
call it Garnath, which in Moorish betokens the cave
of the water goddess Nata, who is said to have lived
in this place ; others maintain that it hath the name
of those scarlet fruits which abound in this province
and are called granates by the Spaniards ; but I my-
self believe rather that it is so called by reason that
the situation thereof resembles a pomegranate, and
that the one is as full of houses as the other of seeds.'*
It was surrounded by high mountains, ever topped
with snow, ‘ and the very sight of them shall in the
dog-days give life to the city-folk in their windows.'
The houses were so many and built so thick together,
that the streets were exceedingly narrow, yet each
house had a fountain of hill-water and at least one
lemon-tree. Above them sprang the thirty towers of
the Alhambra, resembling rather a town than a mere
dwelling.

A few days after the arrival of the German comptany

* Adelfit : oleander ? ‘ Its sweetness is the cause of death,’ writes
Thomasm von Zerklare.

* ‘ Many affirm it to be called so from the resemblance its poat^n
bears to that fruit when ripe ; the two hills to represent the bnr^g
skin^ and the houses, crowded into the intermediate valley, the pips?
(Swinburne.) ‘ I will pick out the seeds one by one of this pome-
gnmate,’ said Ferdinand. (Washington Irving, Coriquest of Granutis^

CHARLES AS BRIDEGROOM 321

there took place the Feast of John the Baptist, the
anniversary of the capitulation of the city. The event
was to be celebrated with peculiar splendour, in
honour of Isabella of Portugal, who had been married
to the Emperor but a few weeks earlier ; and it was
decreed that the Palsgrave should receive his first
audience in the midst of this pageant. The celebra-
tions opened with a bull-feast, in which several persons
were killed, and ended, after the usual Spanish fashion,
with a cane-toumey. In this Charles himself took
part, while the Empress and her Portuguese ladies
looked on from the windows. But the nerves of the
little bride, who had come like sunshine into the harsh
life of the Hapsburger, were not yet inured to the
reckless Spanish manners, and the sport was inter-
rupted by her fears. For Isabella, says Hubertus,
loved her lord the Emperor greatly, not having
long been married to him, and when one of the
combatants was killed by a spear-thrust under her
window she was so sorely alarmed that she sent to
the Emperor and besought him, for this once, to
end the sport. ‘ Quod ille lubens annuit ' : the which
Charles did, not ungladly.

Meanwhile, at the appointed moment, the Palsgrave
appeared upon the arena. Diplomatically suppressing
his own matrimonial disappointments, he gave as
reason of his journey his great desire of beholding
his master, whom he had not seen for so long, in the
character of a young husband. An affable conver-
sation then ensued, Frederick, with ready tact, con-
fining his remarks to the fruitful subject of tilts and
tournaments, and the respective German and Spanish
methods of conducting them.

Charles, indeed, seems to have found pleasure in the
company of his early friend, and to have put himself
to some personal pains in the matter of his entertain-
ment, for on the following day he took him to see a
garden not fer from the Alhambra, where were Moor-
ish women, dressed ‘ like acolytes at the Holy Mass.’

322 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

Some of these females danced to the sound of lutes,
lyres and kettle-drums, beaten by three aged beggars,
singing the while ‘ not melodiously, but in a rustical
and unrhymed fashion,’ while others hung on to ropes,
swinging to and fro, and crying in Moorish : ‘ Whoso
liveth well in this world, cometh to heaven.’ At the
end of the dance they were all given water to drink,
which they held to be a great honour.

For a brief while, therefore, the Palatine party
rested content, filling stray hours with visits to ‘ the
seven wonders of Granada.’ Of these the first was the
‘ beautiful kingly house of Alhambra,’ an immeasurable
palace of courts and galleries, abundantly carved and
gilded, adorned with lions, fountains, orange-trees and
the painted semblances of Moorish kings, paved with
the fair marbles of Africa, which ‘ for the fashioning
of these exquisite works had been brought from far
beyond the sea.’ The second wonder was the garden
of the Generalife : ‘ the fairest of the fair, and of all
labours the most excellent, full of all manner of
strange fruits, whereof are made many arbours with
springing fountains.’ The third marvel was the palace
of Los Alixares, ‘justly called a royal delight’; and
the fourth that ‘ very great street which the Moors
call “ Biuarandblam ” (Plaza de Vibarambld) where
standeth a lovely high fountain.’ The fifth surprise
was the great house, Alcaiceria, containing over two
hundred merchants’ shops where were daily sold
many silks and stuffs, lovely for the multitude of their
colours and the diversity of the workmanship : ‘ it may
well be called a little town,’ adds the chronicler,
* seeing that it hath many little streets and ten chain-
bound doors,’ whose captain guarded it by the aid <rf
many dogs. The sixth wonder was ‘ the brook Darro,'
said to give health to the city by its cooling streams

* ‘The little river Darro, that floweth between lovely hills in a
valtey filled thick as a wood with the most delicate fruits. Through tfe
passeth the Darro, murmuring ever between the great and infinife
stones which it hath in its bed ; and never is it silent. Its sboKS
are shadowy and high.’ (Navagero.)

GRANADA 323

but the Germans found it otherwise, for no sooner had
the learned Dr. Ulrich, who habitually ate nothing
but fruits and the produce of trees, drunk of this
water than he instantly conceived a stomach-ache,
from the which he died. Finally, the seventh miracle
was the Vega, or great meadow encircling the city,
‘ where all fruits grow in such overflowing abundance,
that from the leaves of the trees alone, wherefrom the
silk-worms are made, the king gains yearly thirty
thousand golden florins, apart from the silk that falls
to him.' *

Meanwhile the Palsgrave's private affairs were
not prospering. The secondary, yet very important,
object of his journey had been the recovery from the
Emperor of large sums of money still owing to him
for his services. But when this subject was mooted
Charles merely referred him to his private secretary,
who, in his turn, declined to take any steps till all the
documents relating to the matter had been orderly
produced. Frederick, seeing that his word was not
believed, ‘ tired of the Court,’ and on July 7 the little
company started once more for home.

Hubertus, indeed, was not at first of the party, for
he had unfortunately shared the disease of the lamented
doctor, and was now too weak to move. Forgotten
apparently by his master, he lay groaning on the floor,
gloomily expecting death. And, as the landlord was
on the point of turning him out into the street, it
would certainly have gone ill with him had not the
Prince’s barber unexpectedly returned to recover a
forgotten chattel. This worthy, if unlicensed, practi-
tioner was seized with sympathy, drew instantly from
his pocket ‘ I know not what of catapofiis,’ topped up
the medicine by a generous meal of kid roasted, in the
Spanish manner, with pomegranates and vinegar, and
washed down by a good strong wine, and finally had
him on his legs, and, better still, on his horse, before the
Palsgrave found time to miss his customary attentions.

‘ Airtoioe de Lalaii^.

324 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

The homeward journey was accomplished with
greater comfort and less excitement than the outward
one. The Palsgrave was anxious to reach home, and
soon, taking with him four companions only and
‘ travelling so fast that he lay still neither night nor
day,’ he was over the frontier and in France. At
Amboise he lingered for a few days and was once
more royally entertained by Francis, who presented
him with gilded cups and goblets, enough for a king’s
table. The friendship of the two princes, however,
suffered a slight strain, for on a day when Frederick
came home wet from the chase the generous monarch
warmed him with his own sable-lined garment, worth
2,000 crowns, and was afterwards not pleased — as
Hubertus discovered when he passed through with
the tail of the party — at finding the said cloak offered
for sale in the open market by the Abbot of KnOringer,
to whom the Palsgrave had given it.

Frederick himself reached Spires on the twelfth
day after his departure from Granada, riding, from
lack of horses — a new Chevalier du Chariot — upon a
common cart. Indeed, he arrived in so incredibly
short a time and so miserably dirty a condition, that
the report went forth that he had been seized and
imprisoned by Francis, barely escaping with his life.

On his return from Spain Frederick found the German
estates in a condition of more than usual uproar and
anxiety. The Archduke Ferdinand, already King of
Bohemia, had been newly elected King of Hungary,
in succession to Louis II., his brother-in-law, so
miserably dead in the bogs of Mohacz. And this
election was not only passively resented by many of
the German princes, who themselves aspired to the
honour, but also actively disputed by John Zapolya,
Voivode of Transylvania, who, under promise of a ,

UPROAR IN GERMANY

325

yearly tribute, had succeeded in summoning the great
might of Turkey to his assistance, and was now,
with their co-operation, devastating the Hungarian
dominions. In addition to this external danger, the
battle of beliefs was raging more fiercely than ever at
the Imperial Diet.

For Germany was in the throes of her great struggle.
The famous Diet of Worms had taken place some five
years earlier, and its hero was under the ban of both
the Church and the Empire. Franz von Sickingen,*
backed by his turbulent Ritterschaft and concealing
his private ambitions under the convenient panoply of
a proper and disinterested zeal for the tenets of Luther,
had masqueraded and crusaded as knight of the gospel
and champion of the poor. Following his lead, the
peasants, in their bloody and devastating revolt,* had
adopted a like device, and the agrarian and social
grievances which had prompted the outbreak had
huddled indiscriminately under the hospitable banner
of religious reform. And now the turn of the princes
had come.

Indeed, to vary the metaphor, the Reformation was
a hardy and persistent plant. No sooner had it been
deprived of the powerful support of Sickingen and his
knights than it hastened to wreath itself about the
unsteady prop of the German populace. And, again,
no sooner had the peasants — under the guidance of
such curious and various ‘New Gospellers’ as Ulrich
von Wartemberg and Gotz von Berlichingen, Florian
Geyer and Jacklein Rohrbach — revealed their feeble-

* * De bkn petite race, mais bien gentil compaignon,* writes Le
Jeiitie Advantureux,

* *Tbe peasants,* says Hubertus, who views the matter wholly finom

the arktocratic standpoint, ‘ conspired together to bind their lords and
those set over them, as they termed it, to unjust agreements ; drove
them, if not satisfied, out of their estates, threatened them with death,
slew many, robbed castles, cloisters, churches, burst them up and
Iwnit them down, and did no otherwise than the most cruel enemy in
^ most horrible war. So far did they go in their rage and madness,
that all, even stout-hearted princes, counts, nobles, and especially the
cleigy, that the end of sdi things h^ come.*

326 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

ness than Luther at once transferred the climbing and
now blossoming plant to the care of the triumphant
princes. Encouraged by the example and independent
attitude of the towns, several of these had openly
declared their adherence to the new gospel, and were
losing no opportunity of brandishing their changed
opinions in the faces of their colleagues. A few days
before Frederick’s arrival at Spires, the Landgrave
Philip of Hesse had caused an ox to be publicly
slaughtered in front of his hostel, and had then, as
publicly, partaken of it on a Friday. And both he and
the Elector of Saxony had brought with them their
private preachers, who held forth in the inns to large
assemblies of people. ‘ It is said,’ wrote Spalatin,
' that at no former Diet has there ever been such free,
fearless, insolent talk against the Pope, the Bishops,
and other ecclesiastics, as at this one.’ Nor was this
the worst of the matter. For when the Emperor called
for ‘ eilende Htilfe ’ to arrest the devastating progress
of the Turks, the Protestant delegates refused to
consent to any proposal ‘ until the towns had been
reassured with regard to the holy faith, and the
oppression of the clergy removed from them.’

The need of speedy succour was, however, so urgent
that a compromise was inevitable, and the Archduke
Ferdinand, as Imperial Statthalter, reluctantly assented
to the insertion of that ambiguous clause which was
later to prove so fruitful a source of argument and
misinterpretation. This being duly accomplished, the
Archduke offered to the Count Palatine the command
of the Imperial forces against the invading Turk.

In view of the straitened circumstances of his
exchequer, Frederick was by no means anxious to
accept the honour, and for a considerable time the
matter hung in the balance. But at length Roggendorf,
Steward of the Household, overcame his reluctance by
opening out to him a new matrimonial vista of alluring
brMiiancy. This was no less than an alliance with
Queen Mary of Hungary, widow of Louis, and sister

THE FIRST TURKISH CAMPAIGN 327

not only of the Imperial brothers, but also of that far
removed star, the lovely Eleonore. The war, declared
Roggendorf, should lead Frederick straight to the
arms of the young and bereaved Queen, who ever had
him before her eyes, and would gladly bestow herself
and her possessions, upon him. ‘ To tell you my most
secret thoughts,’ heended, ‘to whom ratherthan to your-
self and his sister would King Ferdinand more gladly
confide the government of the kingdom of Hungary ?
And this so much the gladlier if she were your consort,
bringing to you with her person the favour of the
people.' The Palsgrave hesitated for a long time,
remembering not only the tragedy of Eleonore, but
also an earlier disappointment, when a promised
Princess of Julich had been snatched from him at
the eleventh hour owing to a change of Imperial
purpose. The project tempted him, however, and he
yielded.

The matter once decided, he devoted himself to its
performance with unflagging zest but only middling
success. Before accepting, he had made a condition
that began by astonishing his friends, and ended by
embarrassing himself ; for he had insisted that, in view
of the very serious business with which they were
confronted, a Council of War should be appointed to
aid him. Without delay he summoned this council —
chosen in haste by himself — confidently expecting to
receive from them at least a moderate degree of
illumination and guidance. But no sooner had they
assembled at Regensburg than they began to wrangle.
On no one point could they agree, says Hubertus, and
their deliberations and disputations bid fair to last
until the fatal Paynim arrived in person to settle them.
Finally, it was decided by Frederick that two of their
number, who chanced to be acquainted with the
Hungarian language, should be sent forth to recon-
noitre the enemy and the position generally. And
when these doves returned with the disturbing in-
telligence that — ‘ the spring now come and all things

328 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

fresh and green — the Turks had quitted Adrianople
and were advancing, innumerable as a swarm of
locusts, upon Hungary, his hesitations ceased and he
determined to act upon his own initiative. Sending
forward instantly his nephew, the Palsgrave Philip,
with such few men as he could muster, he only himself
delayed to collect further reinforcements and to consult
with the Archduke-King.

Ferdinand was at Linz, and Frederick therefore
shipped with all speed down the Danube to find him.
He was received in the most friendly manner. ‘At
table they talked much of how to conduct the war,
and also, for mirth’s sake, of many merry things ; and
when the Palsgrave asked leave to withdraw, seeing
that with the earliest dawn he must speed onward, the
King would not allow it.’ On his departure Frederick
was accompanied to the ship with marked attention by
Ferdinand and the two Queens, Anna and Mary, and
presented with two fine chargers, magnificent in
trappings of scarlet and gold.® So his hopes of an
Imperial bride rose high.

At Gran the Palsgrave was met by agitated couriers,
who brought the alarming news that the Emperor
Suleiman,® ‘ with fire and sword and a world of people,’
had already entered the heart of Austria and girdled
her capital with his colossal camp. The famous and
terrible Turkish horsemen were devastating and
destroying the entire district, and the miserable
inhabitants were running hither and thither, dragging
about their children and their chattels, mad with fear
and knowing not how they should be saved. The
kind-hearted Prince was greatly disturbed at this in-
telligence, and pressed forward with all haste. But

* KnoUes’ Historie of the Turkes^ vol. i. A considerable part of
Enolies’ account of the siege of Vienna seems to have been taken fi-ran
Hjdaertus Thomas.

* The porteit Frederick that appears as frontispiece to this book
lepntseats him in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial
Foeo^ ; and it is pleasant to imagine that the great horse which he
bestrides is we of the two here mentioned.

‘pas bitttdnrsti^ hund,’ Hans Sachs calls him.

THE RELIEF OF VIENNA 329

there was little that he could do. His nephew Philip
was shut up with the meagre advance-guard within
the beleaguered city, while he himself, though Com-
mander-in-Chief of a nation that numbered thirty
millions of people, had been able to collect six hundred
soldiers only with which to face the hereditary enemy
of Christendom.

Nor were the forces of Germany, even had they
been stronger by a hundred-fold, confronting a smooth
or simple task. The magnificent Suleiman, fourth
Emperor of the Turks, was no despicable foe, and his
hand had already pressed heavily upon Europe. His
father Selim had on his death-bed charged him to turn
his vast forces and resources wholly against the
Christians, and had left him, as a perpetual reminder, a

* lively and bloody counterfeit ’ of himself to hang ever
at his bedside. Warmed by this inspiring presence,
he had already, in a reign of nine busy years, made
himself the terror of his Christian neighbours. He
had subjugated Bosnia and besieged Belgrade ; Rhodes,
Naxos, Paros, and ‘ the sweet shores of the Tyrrhenian
Sea ’ had felt his cruelty ; and at the woeful battle of
Mohacz his mighty host had engulfed and obliterated
no less than one king, seven bishops, twenty-eight
magnates, and five hundred of the nobility of Hungary
and Bohemia. He was now, moreover, assisted by
the Voivode John, whose rebellious banner had rallied
a motley host of Hungarians, Transylvanians, Sclavo-
nians and Poles.

The Count Palatine, despite his confident device

* Ete Caelo Victoria,’ * was accordingly in a position of
no small difficulty. He advanced as far as Crems, but
here, though anxious to force his way at all hazards
into Vienna, he was compelled by the dictates of both
his council and his common sense, to remain. All that
he could do to assist the beleaguered city was to

’ This motto was emblazoned on alt his banners, and, later, in-
scribed on aU his medaite and carved on the walls of the Castle of
Heidelbei^r.

330 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

harass the enemy with continual skirmishes, and to
write urgently for reinforcements to Ferdinand and
the princes of the Empire. The final safety of the city
was to be won, indeed, by the gallantry and skill of
the garrison, who defended their dilapidated towers ^
with unchanging hearts, standing, writes Knolles,
‘ like resolute men in the face of the breach, with more
assurance than the wall itself.’ During thirty days
Suleiman delivered assaults so numerous and so
terrible that ‘ it was thought a more fierce and deadly
fight was never seen from the beginning of the world.’
But at the end of that time, in despair of winning an
entrance before the possible arrival of Ferdinand with
a powerful army, or the certain coming of the winter
snows, he determined to raise the siege ; and, having
butchered all his prisoners, men, women and children,
with impartial brutality, he vanished with his army in
the direction of Buda.

The Palsgrave was instantly on the move, intending
to collect together all the forces available and compel
the retreating foe to battle. The landsknechts, how-
ever, chose this moment to mutiny for arrears of pay,
and no eloquence of appeal or bounty of promise
could induce in them the faintest shadow of obedience to
his commands. ‘ This notwithstanding, they increased
in their violence, and when he sent captains to
propitiate them they lowered their pikes and made a
circle round the captains, behaving as madmen, and
threatening them with death.’ Soon, too, they settled
down to plunder the city, and the Palsgrave, with
infinite grief, was forced to relinquish his project
of pursuit and devote himself to the recovery of the
most elementary discipline. To attain even this end
he was obliged to promise the insurgents three months’
full pay, nor was he able to comfort his soul by the
administration of the proper penalties of their crime.

* ‘ "pie dty of Vienna is most beautiful and great, walled with most
b o Mit ifal walls of ancient masonry, _ surrounded by moats ’ : so had
wiitten the Venetian envoy Contarini but three years before.

PORTENTS 331

And all this while, concludes old Thomas with awe-
struck piety, God was showing His anger. For it
was a season of raging winds and evil weather, of
countless diseases till then unknown in Germany, of
scarcity, and of pestilent death. The air was terrible
with portents ; three suns appeared in the firmament ;
the moon had a bloody face, visibly marked with a
cross ; and in the Church of St. Stephen there was
seen by many a fiery beam three hundred paces
long.’ ‘ And thus the people were dri\'en through fear to
turn somewhat more devoutly to God, and to arrange
many pilgrimages and processions ; and it contributed
perhaps thereby to save them from damnation.’

Yet Germany was divided to the core, even in this
simple matter of thanksgiving for salvation from a com-
mon and deadly foe. The news of the relief of Vienna
was received with mingled feelings in the very heart of
the Empire. Luther, indeed, had been induced to with-
draw his early declaration that to fight the infidel was
to resist the ordinance of God. But many enemies of
the Hapsburgs, both secular and religious, had offered
their assistance to Zapolya ; while Philip of Hesse,
with the single eye of the reformer, openly lamented
the Turkish failure and prayed for another attack.

Hubertus himself witnessed neither the military
efforts of his master nor the miraculous manifestations
of Providence, for the Palsgrave, considering how
indispensable to his new projects of matrimony was
the Imperial sanction, had despatched him to intercept
the Emperor on his way to coronation at Bologna.
The annalist now therefore turns with a far more
lively pen to his own adventures in Italy.

Indeed, to reach and traverse the north of Italy was
at this moment a process of both difficulty and danger.
It was but two years since the whole peninsula — and

* All contemporaries agree in their accoimts of this extraordinary
year, in which eardi^uakes, meteors, floods, swarms of locusts, and
‘ blo^-rain ’ were daily events, and even the birds and fishes suffered
firosn strange diseases. It culminated in the epidemic of the Sweating
Sickness.

332 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

indeed all Europe— had shuddered at the incredible
horror of the sack of Rome. The Swiss and Venetians
were still at war with the Empire. The roads were
infested with every species of vagabond, rogue and thief.
Robbery and murder flourished, and law and lawless-
ness alike were the constant curse of the peaceable
wayfarer. In vain was Hubertus sent by the Pals-
grave to Augsburg to request the assistance of Anton
Fugger. Even this powerful personage had nothing
to suggest, save that the envoy should journey in the
apparel of a merchant. So in this disguise he set
forth, and safely arrived in Venice, where he lay in
comparative security with the agent of the Fuggers at
the ‘ Inn of the German House.’ ^

Charles was reported to be at Piacenza, and, after
a rest of two or three days, Hubertus started thither
in the company of a merchant of Ulm. They set out in
a ‘navicula’ towards Mantua, but had sailed no further
than the Brenta Canal when they were seized by the
servants and beadles of the Signory and haled back to
the Piazza of St. Mark. Here Hubertus remained for
many hours in the charge of sixteen gaolers. And
when at length he was removed it was but to the
galleys, where ‘ the miserable prisoners were being
terribly tormented, and I was given almost certainly
to expect that I should be treated in a like manner.
To cheer him further they showed him the gibbets,
of which there were many, and experimented upon
him with the Strape di Corda.* And thus the day

* Not the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, but the humbler Deutsches Haus,
also known as the Inn of St. George or of The Flute. (Cf. Rbhricht.)
The entire household was German, even the house-dog being patriotic
to the core, and raging impartially against all who came not from the
Fatherland. ‘ I have often rescued poor men from this dog’s teeth.
The Germans say that he is a proof that, as he is the implacable foe
of Italians, so German men cm never agree with Italians from the
bottom of their hearts, nor Italians with us, because each nation has
hatred of the other rooted in its very nature.’ (Felix Fabri )

* ‘ For all they putt him to the torment of the cord,’ writes Hoby of
Fiaacesca della Toire, ‘ they coulde never make him confesse. . . .
Aisd the lawe is, except a man confesse his tresspace when he is putt
to tiWs torment, he shall never suftre deathe for yt.’

VENETIAN HOSPITALITY 333

wore away from seven in the morning until four of
the afternoon.

Finally, he was taken to the council-chamber in the
Doge's Palace, where all his baggage was opened, and
himself ‘ stripped as naked as when I came into the
world.’ This did not, however, deter the excellent
secretary from holding improving converse with the
chancellor, who told him, amongst other things, that
they were sorely in want of a Luther at Venice, to cleanse
the city and rid it of the importunate priesthood.

No incriminating papers being found, both Hubertus
and Semmler, the merchant, were released with
apologies, and forwarded on their way with zeal.
The kindness which they now suddenly received was,
indeed, so marked that they wondered much over its
cause. Certainly, said Semmler, they had discovered
the identity of Hubertus, and wished secretly to stand
well with the Count Palatine. But the annalist
himself maintained that it arose from commercial
prudence, since they would not wish it to be said
that German merchants could not visit Venice in
safety, even in times of war. With regard to the
Palsgrave, his name would surely only have increased
their animosity, since the Venetians had but recently
despatched four thousand men to the assistance of the
Turks before Vienna.

So once again they set out, taking the precaution of
sending their letters of commendation by another
hand to Mantua. In Padua they were welcomed by
the captain of the city, who congratulated them on
having fallen into the hands of the Signory of Venice,
since he himself had received orders to treat them
with far less gentleness. Now, however, he was
permitted to entertain them hospitably, and provide
all necessaries for their journey. A potion of Malmsey
wine was especially relished by Hubertus, to the great
alarm of Semmler, who constantly and dolorously
warned him of his rashness with the grim quotation :
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

334 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

At Legnago they were also taken before the captain
of the town, and found him very busy with the
torture of a poor butcher of Trident, whom he caused
to be hung on high by his middle, in order to learn ‘ I
know not what ’ from him. ‘ At length, since the poor
man had nothing to say, and the captain bethought
him that we might have had enough of this spectacle,
he turned round and behaved as though he had just
discovered us.’

They arrived in Mantua on hired post-horses,
‘ which they call martyrs,’ ^ full of relief and hope. But
the messenger with the precious documents was not
forthcoming, having apparently appropriated the
money and decamped. So that it was a humbled
and apologetic Hubertus who pursued his way to
Piacenza. A Jew who spoke German conducted him
as far as Parma. There he happened upon Kaspar
von Frundsberg, who was on his way to join the
Emperor, and begged for the protection of his escort.
The captain graciously assenting, they set out, accom-
panied by twenty other traffickers of merchandise;
but they were not more than two miles from Parma
when they were assailed with shots out of a reed-bed,
and, without a moment’s hesitation, Frundsberg and
his men ran away. Owing to the feebleness of their
horses, the travellers could with difficulty extract
themselves from the deep mud and slime of the road,
and one of the merchants was left for dead by the
wayside,

Hubertus went on alone to Piacenza, comforted by
the intelligence that the Emperor was there in person,
engaged in hanging all the murderers and road-robbers
that he could catch. He arrived late at night in the
town, and found every lodging crammed and no bed
to be obtained on any pretext. Standing in the streets,
therefore, he railed upon the city and its inhabitants
in good set German terms, until the host of an adjacent

* ‘ MartTTK ’ : ‘ We hired some of the horses which they call “ mar-
tyia.*’ (FehxFabri.) See also Sir John Skippon’s

PIACENZA 335

inn precipitated himself upon him, declaring that for
love of the fatherland he should be given beds ‘ were
there even ten of him.’ For it was but of the Spanish
and Flemish soldiery that all men stood in dread.^
To bed accordingly he got. But it was a precarious
couch, for he was compelled to share it with another
lodger who, a few nights later, with thoughts intent
on gold, fell upon his chamber-fellow and murdered
him. Fortunately Hubertus happened that very night
to have exchanged his accommodation with another
traveller, and so escaped once more the embrace of
death. The culprit was condemned to be tortured and
hanged, and, even as Hubertus came back at midday
from an Imperial audience, he beheld the poor wretch,
or what remained of him, being carried on a donkey
to have the second and more merciful portion of his
sentence fulfilled.

The arrival of the Palsgrave’s ambassador was
ipstantly announced to Charles, who had been im-
patiently expecting news from Germany ; and at nine
on the following morning he was taken to the presence-
chamber. The Emperor laughed heartily at the tale
of his misadventures, and Count Henry of Nassau
ccmgratulated him on his escape from Venice, since
only the week before another Imperial messenger had
been boiled in oil by the Signory.

Warned ‘ to make no long German business ’ of his
speech, Hubertus now quickly expounded his mission,
telling how his master, anxious for a consort, had
fixed his thoughts and hopes on the Imperial Majesty’s
sister, should he but be thought worthy of the same.
Charles answered in a favourable spirit. The Prince
was wise to marry, he observed, since, if he wished to
behold his children’s children, he could certainly not
afford to wait much longer. As for himself, he was
flattered by the Palsgrave’s choice of his sister, and an

’ ‘ If you are meanly arrayed, with dirty shirt, or dressed like a
&anisli soldier, you will find it difficult to obtain anything,’ (Grataroli,
D€ R0giimne iter Cf. Bonnaffd.)

336 THE adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

answer should be forthwith given by his minister,
Granvelle.^ This distinguished personage was also
exceedingly amiable, but postponed his decision for a
few days.

These days were spent by Hubertus wholly within
the walls of his inn, for men were dying plentifully in
Piacenza of hunger and the plague. ‘ Not a day
passed,’ he writes, without ten, twenty or more of the
Imperial Court dying, mostly young people ; and this
albeit the Emperor had made all possible provision.’
So it was after a gloomy interval that the envoy
applied once more to Granvelle for his answer. But
in the meantime Charles had been irritated by an
unforeseen event. For not only had the deputation
from the Lutheran states — ‘which men call the Pro-
testants ’ — arrived with the famous Protest that gave
them their name, but also one of their number,
Michael von Kaden, had in the name of the Landgrave
of Hesse indiscreetly presented His Majesty with a
booklet in the French tongue, containing instruction
in the tenets of Luther. The Spaniards on learning of
this were so enraged with the envoys for ‘ seeking by
treacherous means to bend the young Emperor from
the right Christian belief,’ that it was with the greatest
difficulty that they could be hindered from hanging
the entire deputation to the nearest bough.

The matrimonial affairs of the Palsgrave were
therefore thrust into the background, and Hubertus
himself was put to use as interpreter between the
Court and the culprits. Owing to his intercession the
less guilty members were eventually permitted to set
forth for home, which they did with anxious speed
that self-same night. The chief offender was com-
manded to follow the Emperor to Bologna to receive
the judgement of the Pope, and, with the generosity
of despair, presented his useless safe-conduct to the
interpreter. His fortune, however, was to be an

* Nio^as Perrenot de Granvelle, Imperial Councillor and father of
^ {P«at cardinaL

THE EVIL ILLNESS 337

easier one than he anticipated, for when Hubertus
arrived in Venice he found Kaden already waiting to
receive him. Owing, probably, to the fact that
Charles had been advised to show clemency in the
matter, he had found no one at Bologna to guard him,
and, wisely deciding to remove without further delay
from so dangerous a neighbourhood, had departed
unopposed from the Court.

Meantime the annalist had followed Charles to
Parma in the hope that the Imperial mood might have
calmed itself. But there he received only a friendly
dismissal, with letters for the Palsgrave and the
Duke of Mantua. * I will prophesy to you about these
Lutherans, Hubertus,’ said Granvelle, still overflowing
with irritation : ‘ defiers now of the whole world with
their union of faith, so soon as a tempest breaks upon
them, unmindful of this faith, they will let themselves
be scared away as doves by an eagle.’ ‘ Of the which
prediction,’ adds the chronicler, ‘ I bethought myself,
when the Emperor lately assailed them with war.’

Hubertus’ return journey was of a less adventurous
complexion than his former one, since Venice and the
Empire were now at peace. The Palsgrave, whom
he met unexpectedly at Scherdingen, was moreover
greatly pleased with the encouraging tone of the
Imperial letters, ‘ never suspecting that the Emperor
sought only to keep him dangling, and to use him for
his own purposes at the Diet of Augsbimg.’ The only
drawback to the annalist’s contentment was, therefore,
the terrible epidemic of ‘ the evil illness which men call
the English sweat, since it came from England.’

For no sooner had Hubertus crossed the mountains,
congratulating himself on having escaped from this
pestilence in Italy, than he learned, to his horror, that
it was devastating Heidelberg, and that his own wife
was stricken down. He was about to fly to her
succour when he himself was seized by the disease,
falling suddenly ‘ into an above measure strong sweat.’
Now everybody, he tells, was at this time under the

338 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

thumb of ‘ an ignorant knavish doctor,’ and, in accord-
ance with the precepts of this worthy, he was stewed in
bed for four-and-twenty hours, with never a drop to
drink. His anguish was becoming insupportable when
a kindly Samaritan in the shape of an aged woman,
having seen that no one was by, offered him a ran
of beer, with the acceptable advice that he should take
a good long draught. Whereupon, being near to death
and reckless, he laid firm hands on the vessel, emptied
it to the very dregs, and became instantly so strong
that he ‘ sprang out of bed as though there was
nothing the matter.’

It must be added, in the doctor’s defence, that this
treatment was in accordance with the prescriptions of
the most distinguished physicians in Germany. So
great was the despair of Europe when the dreaded
disease was found to be leaving its island home that
thousands died of sheer fright, and the terror-stricken
doctors had recourse to the most violent methods they
could invent Their first anxiety being to make the
patient perspire for twenty-four hours without inter-
mission, they would keep the stove at furnace heat,
close every possible aperture for air, cram feather-beds
and furs on to the sufferer’s body, and finally, to
prevent his moving hand or foot, pile several healthy
and heavy relations on to the top of the already enor-
mous mound.^ Moreover, for fear lest the victim
should find solace in sleep, he not improbably had his
hair tom out, his limbs tied together, and vinegar
dropped into his eyes ; while, as Hubertus records, no
drink of any kind was permitted him. And in this
rehearsal of hell the patient almost certainly expired.
The annalist, therefore, may well have congratulated
himself upon his escape.®

In the March of the following year, 1530, the Palsgrave

‘ C£ Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Tr. by Babington.

• See lUastradve Notes, 59.

IMPERIAL AMENITIES 339

was himself once more upon the road, bearing to the
Emperor the congratulations of the Estates on his
coronation, and trusting, with his usual optimism, to
receive in return the confirmation of his new hopes.
Halting at Villafranca, a few miles from Mantua,
Frederick sent forward the faithful secretary to herald
his approach.

Hubertus found Charles about to make his state
entry into Mantua, in a ‘ village not far from the
Gonzaga Palace,’ and at once delivered himself of his
business. Receiving a gracious message in response,
he was about to return, when the Emperor, being at the
moment engaged with his midday meal, asked if he
had eaten. Too faint for speech, since he had tasted
no food for four-and-twenty hours, he shook his
head, and was then given roast loin of veal upon a
footstool close to the Imperial table itself : the which
‘ I began not to eat, but rather like a ravening wolf to
devour.’ At this the Emperor whispered something to
the Count of Nassau, who came to Hubertus and said :
‘ The Emperor wishes that he had as good a stomach
as thou hast ’ ; ^ but asked further whether it was his
custom to eat meat at fast times. The unlucky herald
was so horrified at his own forgetfulness that he could
scarce swallow any more, but Charles only laughed
and nodded to him to complete his meal, sending him,
as a crowning favour, a huge goblet of Malvoisie,
which he took off at a draught.

On March 25, being the Feast of the Annunciation,
the Emperor entered Mantua in state, splendidly
adorned in brocades of gold and silver, and wearing
the sword and cap of Empire with which he had just
been invested at Bologna. The Palsgrave, who had
found quarters at an inn, watched the procession from
a window, being so surrounded by people that he
could barely be seen. ‘ Yet could he not remain

* * Optat, inquit, Imperator talem sibi qualem tu habes stomacbum.*

‘ Sacred Heaven ! WhRt masticators i What bread ! ’ ( Yorick's
TVm/eis,)

340 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

hidden from the sharp-sighted Emperor, who laughed
up at him, and greeted him more than once with
nodding head. And not a few wondered at whom he
was so friendly smiling.’ Next day, too, at the formal
audience, Charles took Frederick by the cloak, and,
drawing him into the nearest window, talked with him
privately for a long time on the businesses of Italy
and the Empire. Had the Palsgrave not come south,
he added, he was about to bid him to a meeting at
Innsbruck, which his brother Ferdinand and his sister,
the royal widow of Hungary, were also to attend. ‘ And
when he had said this, and seen how the Prince blushed,
he set to laughing, and added : So soon as we have
arrived there, we will speak of this matter again, and
you shall find in me not only a gracious Emperor, but
also a dear and close friend.' And in this gentle fashion
was the wooing of Frederick once more postponed.

Despite the charms of the Marchesa Isabella, who
was the magnificent hostess of this magnificent occasion
(but whom Hubertus ungallantly omits to mention), ‘
the Palsgrave soon wearied of Mantua. There were,
in fact, no amusements of any kind to be had except
sport, and though the hxmting-parties were ordered
in the most sumptuous and prodigal manner — s,ooo
riders frequently appearing in the field — they proved
only the more tedious to so genuine a sportsman as
the Palatine Prince. Moreover, Federigo II. of
Mantua, son of Isabella and newly created Duke, was
by no means amiably inclined towards his namesake
of the Rhine, and their relations were more than a
little strained. So before long Frederick determined
to take a short holiday, and shipped down the Po
to Ferrara, visiting on the way, with particular
pleasure, Pietello, ‘ the father-city of Virgil.’ ®

* Perhaps, like Antonio de Beads, he ‘passed her in silence,
because to si>eak of her is a thing more than human.’

* * Within ij or iij miles of Mantua there is a village called Pietola,
where Virgile was born ; and upon the hill there, there is a little brick
bowse which th’ inhabitants of the countrey call casetta de Vergilio,
l^<lmg oj^ion that was his house, and that there he kept his beastes
as a shepherd.’ (Thomas Hoby.)

FERRARA AND VENICE

341

In Ferrara the Palsgrave enjoyed the company
of the Duke Alfonso I., widower of Lucrezia Borgia
and patron of poets. The princes did not eat together,
for it was the season of Lent, and the German, more
scrupulous than his host, would partake of no meat.
Nor were any gold or silver vessels brought to table,
everything being served in earthen dishes : possibly,
ponders Hubertus, because of some custom of the
country, or possibly in accordance with the proverb,
that a man should not outstrip his fortune, when
unexpectedly raised from an inferior rank of life — an
observation somewhat offensive to the pride of the
noble family of Este. But in all other matters the
visitors were treated with great honour, and they
were shown ‘all the marvels of the city,’ including
the beautiful pleasure garden on an island in the Po.^

Returning to Mantua, the Palsgrave obtained per-
mission from Charles to precede him on the homeward
journey, and was soon in Venice. Anxious to pass
unnoticed, he alighted, with few retainers, in a mean
and common lodging. But his ‘ valiant port and comely
countenance ’ having speedily betrayed him, he was
waited upon by the Signory. Despite his protests,
he was allotted a magnificent dwelling, hard by
the Palace of the Doge,® and presented with wine,
candles, confectionery and fish, while three grave and
reverend seigniors were appointed to show him the
city and to attend to his every want. ‘ He is a most
beautiful German,’ says Marino Sanuto, who records
the movements of this visitor with unusual interest,
‘ and he goes about seeing the land.’ On Easter Day
the Doge, in golden magnificence, led him by the hand

* * On the other side of the Po that cummethe under the walls of the
towne is the yland of Belvedere, where the Dak’s house of pleaser is,
with sundrie devises for water.’ (Thomas Hoby.)

* * He sought to dismount at San Bartolomeo by Piero Pender, that
is the hostelry, who wished to lodge him in the convent of the Frari
Minori, but there was sent to him on this evening Zuan Batista de
Ludovici, the secretary, to see to his lodging . . . and he was put to
lodge in the Calle de la Rasse in the Casa Dandolo, below the
Ambassador of the Emperor.’ (Marino Sanuto.)

542 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

into San Marco to hear the High Mass, and into San
Zaccaria to receive the plenary pardon. And here the
Venetians would seem to have greatly outshone the
Palatines, since the Palsgrave is described as being
clad in a sober velvet suit of black, while another
German gentleman, perhaps Hubertus, was remarkable
for nothing save ‘ a great large hat.’ The Doge and
his nobles, on the other hand, were splendid in cloths
of gold, with damasks and velvets of every hue, one
even being adorned ‘ for beauty and triumph’s sake in
cloth of a peacock purple.’ Finally, at the Great
Council that took place on Easter Monday, Frederick
was given a seat next to the Doge, and allowed the
unusual privilege of wearing his weapons.

To be short, ‘they did all things imaginable that
might honour and rejoice the Prince.’ One thing only
had the visitors to complain of: that they could get
only malmsey to drink. This, indeed, was given of the
richest, with the injunction to consume it — ^which
Frederick had forbidden — ^in good German fashion;
but nothing could compensate them for the loss of
their national beverages. Even the presentation of a
live sturgeon was of no avail, although this ‘ gave great
pleasure.’

On the way to Trent the Palsgrave discussed his
private affairs with his secretary, confiding to him how
high the Count of Nassau had raised his matrimonial
hopes. Not only had this good friend informed him
that both the Emperor and Granvelle were strongly in
favour of the marriage with the Queen of Hungary,
but he had also reported a conversation between them
to the effect that, when once Frederick was Charles’s
brother-in-law, there could be no better plan than to
make him King of the Romans. The Emperor had
too many businesses in far-off lands to wish to under-
take a further one, and Ferdinand, who already had
two crowns, had his hands full with the Turkish
invasions ; while neither brother had sufficient know-
ledge of German affairs to occupy the post adequately.

QUEENS OF HUNGARY 343

In fact, the Emperor could rule far better through
Frederick than in person. ‘And all this seemed to
the good Prince as both credible and comfortable, as
was ever the case, and it turned to his great dis-
advantage that he so easily placed his hopes on all
things. The Court people knew this right well, and
when they wished to deceive him, came ever prepared
with matters high to reach.’

Frederick waited in Trent for the Emperor to arrive
from Mantua, and, after a further delay of four
days in order to hunt bears,* travelled through the
Tyrol in his train. At Innsbruck the Imperial
party was greeted by King Ferdinand, and by ‘ about
fifty ladies of the first of the land, old and young,
beautiful and ugly ’ ; the old being all clad ‘ as are the
Hebrews,’ while the young were arrayed a la tedesca
in caps of black velvet and crimson. Nor is it im-
probable that Frederick here envied his master the
exercise of his Imperial prerogative, for Charles, writes
a Venetian envoy not without humour, ‘made as
though he would kiss the young ones, but disengaged
himself as soon as might be from those of riper years.’ *

A few days after this gallant entry, the two Queens
of Hungary also arrived in Innsbruck, and the Count
Palatine was privileged to behold his promised bride.
Charles, who was exceedingly fond of his sister, also
rode out to meet them, mounted on a gold-bedecked,
grey-dappled horse, and surrounded by a brilliant
company, ‘ and first he kissed his sister, then went to
kiss his sister-in-law ; and then he returned to kiss his
sister, and so went again to kiss the sister-in-law ; and
yet another time he went back to kiss the sister and to

* *The Prince and theire Courtyers, mounted upon good horses,
and armed with a shorte sworde and a sharpe forked speare, doe many
tymes hunt Beares, wounding them often and lightly with theire
speares, and then flying, while others persue till at last they falle
downe wounded and wearyed, and then the Courtyers keeping them
downe with theire speares, the Prince hath the honour to pull out the
Bearers hart with his speare.’ {Shakespear^s Europe^

* Letter from Zuan Francesco Mazardo, in Marino Sanuto’s Diariu

344 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

talk with her.’^ The widowed lady was dressed, as
beseemed her forlorn condition, all in black, with
neither jewels nor pomp, and is described as young
and thin,* and resembling the Emperor. She seems,
however, despite her sorrows, to have preserved a
cheerful spirit and a taste for horsemanship. For
when, on the homeward way, they came to a little
meadow, she tried to make her horse ‘ execute sundry
gambols,’ and only stopped because the Emperor and
the King began to laugh. Near the town, too, the pro-
cession met a lady leading a large tame stag with
splendid horns, and, although the Queen’s horse shied
violently, she spurred him and made him curvet round
the animal with great dexterity ; ‘ for in managing a
horse she is most skilful and full of vigour.’*

Frederick remained for some weeks at Innsbruck.
But the fears of Hubertus were proved just, for very
soon the Palsgrave was being solicited for his in-
fluence in favour of the election of Ferdinand as King
of the Romans. As to his matrimonial hopes, he was
informed by Granvelle that both Charles and Ferdinand
had spoken earnestly with their sister on the subject
The Queen of Hungary had at first declined to entertain
the idea of a new marriage, but she had finally admitted
that, should she ever bring her mind to it, there was
none she would sooner choose than the Palsgrave,
whose gentleness, probity, and piety had long roused
her admiration. Only she made one stipulation : once

^ Letter of Paxm Bertecio in Marino Sanuto’s Diariu

* Contarini describes her as : ‘ Magra, acuta, ha femad’avere grande
ingegno, e valere assai.’ But he also decries her sister Eleonore as
*BO!Dt brutta ne bella . , . e vera fiarnminga.’ (Alberi. Ser, 1. 1. h.)
Brant6me is more complimentary: ‘Cette reine de Hongrie estait tres
belle et agreable, et fort aimable, encores qu^elle se monstrat un peu
hemmasse.^ Beatis speaks of Anna of Hungary as ‘ very comely and
gay, wkh lively eyes, and a complexion of blood and milk/ Mary he
considers ‘ negriglia * and lacking in grace.

• ‘ She is a Virago,’ wrote Roger Ascham many years later m his
dmry, having met her after a journey that should properly have taken
seventeen days, but had been accomplished by the queai in thirteen ;
‘she is never so well as when she is flinging on horseback, and tout-
ing al the night Icmg.’

THE DIET OF AUGSBURG

345

a queen, she would sink to no lesser sphere, and it
must therefore be arranged that the Elector Palatine
Ludwig should resign his electoral dignity to his
brother. But even the simple-hearted Palsgrave could
now perceive the designs of Imperial policy against
the independence of the Palatinate, and he replied so
fiercely to this final proposal that the Chancellor was
much alarmed. ‘ Though my brother himself should
assent to it,’ he concluded, ‘ rather would I fly to all
the ends of the earth than allow myself to be thus
employed.’ Granvelle attempted to soothe him, saying
that the whole idea was no more than a feminine
whim; but the Palsgrave recognised that 'a large
portion of his hope had been cut off.’

And in fact this his second royal romance was at an
end. The death of Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the
Netherlands, renewed indeed for a brief hour his
dreams of a vice-royalty shared with the Hungarian
Queen. But the widow of Louis, being again
approached on the matter, declared her decision to be
unalterable, and Charles himself advised Frederick to
turn his thoughts elsewhere.

Out of love with matrimony, the Palsgrave sought
to console himself with politics and sport. Commanded
by the Emperor to attend him to the Diet at Augsburg,
he went northwards in the Imperial company, witness-
ing by the way the many parades and pageants that
welcomed Charles, after his nine long years of absence,
back to the land of his ancestors, and taking part in one
of those famous Bavarian hunting-parties which the
papal legate Campeggio^ described to his master as
' the most beautiful chases in the world.’ On one day
alone five hundred stags were driven from the massive
woods of pine and beech that surrounded the famous
hunting-gprounds, hunted industriously by the hounds,
and at last demolished by the graneitoni and other
hand-weapons of the riders. ‘And they could have

* MoHummta Vaitcafta, xxxii. (l^ammer.)

346 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

slaughtered as many again as they did slay,’ comments
a Venetian envoy.^

Frederick took a prominent part in the magnificent
entry into Augsburg, being deputed by the Emperor to
make ‘ a gallant and courteous reply ’ to the welcoming
speech of the Electors. He was also compelled, against
his will, to accept the presidency of the Diet, and since
this was the important assembly at which the Pro-
testant princes, declining ‘to bow down to idols,’
delivered their famous Confession, while the Catholics,
reluctantly supported by Charles, grew ever more
violent in reaction, his exalted bed was by no means
one of rose-leaves. Even at this world-famed Diet,
indeed, politics and theology were not the sole care
of the Palsgrave and his master, and amusement played
its part.® Nor was their anxiety as to the religious
opinions of host or guest overwhelming, for, at a
banquet given to the Emperor by a notable Lutheran,
there were suffered to hang above the visitors’ heads the
portraits of Luther and Melanchthon, and even of that
‘ horrid stone of stumbling,’ Luther’s ‘ monkish ’ wife.
‘And they give themselves a good time,’ says one
scribe, ‘ and do very well ; and it does not seem that
they greatly care who is Lutheran and who is not’ ®

Frederick appears, however, to have accomplished his
difficult duties with justice and tact, watching especially,
writes Hubertus, that Imperial Majesty should not be
defrauded by hypocrisies or bribes, and reminding
the members constantly of their obligations. With
great generosity, he took an active part in securing the
election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans, and on

^ Letter of Gaspare Spinelli in Marino Sanuto's Diarii,

* See the reports of the Venetian agents, and cf. Armstrong

* Letter to Marco Antonio Magno, in Marino Sanuto. Sandovalj on
the other hand, rejects with indigfnation the charge of lukewarmness
on the part of Charles. ‘ To give one instance of his zeal for Religion :
ime of the Protestant Princes in the Diet of Augsburg railing un-
maimerly against the Catholick Church, His Imperial Majesty was so
pmvok’d that, forgetting his Dignity, he started up, clapt his hand to
ins sword, and had made an example of that hot German, had not his
brother, King Ferdinand, withheld him.’

THE SECOND TURKISH CAMPAIGN 347

more than one occasion he showed admirable zeal in
the cause of religious peace and reform. Before long,
indeed, he performed a service of infinite value to his
country, for, owing to his intercession and influence with
Charles, the sovereign consented to meet the Elector
Palatine and the Cardinal of Mainz at Nuremberg,^
and arranged for a truce, whereby the adherents of the
old, as of the new, faith undertook to embark upon no
hostile course of action until matters should be defi-
nitely settled by a General Council. In return for this
concession the Protestants gave their help against the
common foe of Christendom, the Emperor of the Turks.

For the Turkish terror was again hammering at the
gates of Austria, and all the strength of the Empire
was needed to repulse it. Cason, one of Suleiman’s
chief commanders, was ravaging the country. Thou-
sands of men and women, tied together by chains and
ropes, were carried away by his troops, ‘ enforced to
run as fast as their horses ’ ; while the villages were so
freely burned to the ground ‘ that all the country every
way almost for the space of a hundred and fifty miles
was covered with smoke and fire.’ Palsgrave Frederick
was again appointed General of the German forces,
and Charles and Ferdinand also themselves took the
field. ‘ The river of Danubius,’ writes Knolles, ‘ never
carried so many vessels and soldiers since the time of
the great Roman emperors as it did at that present ;
and yet, besides them which went down the river by
shipping, the pleasant banks on both sides were filled
with great companies of horsemen and footmen passing
all alongst the river under their colours, with their
drums and trumpets sounding, which altogether made
the most glorious show that a man could well behold
upon earth.’ The campaign was momentarily success-
ful. Cason was defeated and slain by the Palatine,
and Suleiman was once more forced to retire, leaving
the hot remembrance of his cruelty, ‘ and still looking
behind him if the Emperor were not at his heels.’

* See Illustrative Note^ 6o.

348 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

VII

Meanwhile the Palsgrave had again become involved
in the intricate toils of diplomatic courtship.

His earliest venture, after the ill-fated Hungarian
episode, was connected with the Marquisate of Mont-
ferrat. The young Marchese Bonifazio — ^the last re-
presentative of the illustrious stem of the Paleologhi—
had lately died, leaving his sisters as sole heiresses ; >
and Charles had decided that the Palsgrave should
marry Maria, the elder of the two princesses, who was
possessed of several thousand ducats of yearly income.
Frederick’s state of mind at this proposal was un-
imaginable, writes Hubertus. On the one hand was
his keen and growing desire for matrimony at any
cost, and on the other his ‘ manly love ’ for Mary of
Hungary, ‘ which could not so speedily be torn from
his heart.’ Granvelle, however, visited him so con-
stantly with reports of the beauty, grace and intelli-
gence of the lady of Montferrat, and urged him so
warmly to lose no time in securing the incomparable
treasure, that at length he gave his assent.

But ill-fortune again intervened. Before the needful
formalities were concluded, the unhappy princess was
stricken down, ‘ whether by poison or accident, who
can say,’ and by her untimely death the Palsgrave was
once more robbed of his hopes.

None the less, negotiations were quickly opened for
the substitution of Margherita, the younger of the two
sisters, now possessed of a double dowry ; and all might
yet have been well, had not another suitor suddenly
stepped in and carried off the prize. This was F ederigo,
Duke of Mantua, who had long been hostile to the Pals-
grave, and now, with much discretion, bribed the power-
ful Chancellor to his side. ‘ And thus it was said that
Granvelle earned twenty thousand ducats, and helped
the Duke of Mantua to marriage and the Marquisate’

J His kniDediate successor was his uncle, Giovanni Giorgio, but this
pribee was already a dying man.

VICISSITUDES OF COURTSHIP 349

This excursion having also come to nothing, and
soft words being still his only guerdon, the Palsgrave
began seriously to con the princesses of Europe, with
a view to matrimony. And now duchesses and the
daughters of kings dropped like peach-blossoms about
his head. First came a princess of Poland, elegant
and eligible, and amiably inclined towards a German
suitor. But Frederick was cautious even in his love-
affairs, and knew the parsimony of Poland. Had not
Duke George of Bavaria waited a whole lifetime for
the portion of his Polish bride ? On learning there-
fore that, according to the custom of the Polish kings,
the alliance must be sought and settled before any
word was spoken of the dowry, he discreetly withdrew
from the contest, and left the lady to Joachim of
Brandenburg. Soon after he was urgently approached
by the envoy of the Duke of Milan, who offered him
the hand of the Duke of Calabria’s sister, with her
portion of sixty thousand ducats. While he was de-
bating this proposal, the King of France, who had
constant designs upon the Palatinate, made known to
him, through his ambassador, that should he be moved
to ally himself with a French princess, not only might
he take his choice from all the kingdom, but also the
lady of his election should be dowered by Francis as
were she his own royal daughter. Three damsels
were suggested as specially suitable : the sister of the
King of Navarre, the daughter of the Ducde Vendbme,
and the daughter of the Due de Guise.

Frederick, though not unsuspicious of these royal
suggestions, was a little tempted by them, and finally
decided to send Hubertus and his chancellor, Hart-
mannus, to France to apply for the hand of the last-
named lady. After a considerable delay, owing
to the difficulty of discovering the whereabouts
of Francis,^ the two ambassadors found the King

^ ^ Never in all the time of my embassy was the Court in one
^ace for fifteen days at a time,’ {Giusi^mamyAm^assadeurs V^nttzens^
TcMnmaseo, t. i.)

350 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

at Chantilly.^ But their reception was unsatis-
factory, for Francis, though lavish of venison pasties
and such-like delicacies, ‘to keep us in good repair,’
postponed the audience for seven days. And even
then, no sooner had the important matter been
broached than, with ready diplomacy, he deferred the
whole question till some future season when, more at
leisure, he might meet them at Paris. ‘ And it shall
from henceforth be my care,’ he genially said, ‘that
venison shall never be lacking to you, although we
have no such rich hunting grounds as yours of Heidel-
berg, which I yearn to see.’

So the envoys retreated to Paris, and impatiently
awaited the pleasure of the King. But they had finally
to be contented with an interview accorded to them by
the Constable of Bourbon, in which it was diplomatic-
ally revealed that — owing, it was averred, to the tardi-
ness of their arrival — the daughter of the Due de
Guise, for whose hand they had made formal applica-
tion, had already been affianced to the young and
wealthy Due de Longueville.

To console them for this new misfortune, the sister
of the King of Navarre, with her portion of sixty
thousand crowns and the possible succession to the
kingdom, was now pressed upon their notice. ‘ And
verily,’ said the Constable, ‘ the wife of the Duke of
Ferrara, the sister of the late Queen, did not take so
much money as dowry to her husband.’ The envoys
expressed their guarded gratification, seeing that their
instructions had reference to the Guise Princess alone.
But in reality they were well pleased. For ‘ Ysabeau ’
was one of the fairest ladies of France, with the
throat of alabaster, the gentle speech, the queenly
gait, the clear carnation and the lovely eyes — ^with,
above all, the * petit ris follastre ’ — that still shine out

* ‘That incomparable place,’ writes Lord Herbert of Cherbury:
* C har les V., the great Emperor, passing in the time of Frangois I.
. , . afier he_ had taken this p^ace into his consideration with the
fetiKts adjoining, said he would willingly give one of his provinces for
socir a pl^e.’ {AuiiidicgrapAy.)

ROYAL PREVARICATIONS 351

from the verse of Marot ; and, together with her regal
dowry, should assuredly make a suitable bride even
for their paragon of a Palsgrave. To make sure that
rumour had not lied in its account of the lady’s
charms, the envoys permitted themselves to be sump-
tuously entertained by the Bishop of Paris, and taken
by him to a dance, where was present ‘ the Lady
Isabeau of Navarre, all costly adorned. And to the
end that we should in no way doubt of her beauty,
it was commanded that one of the nobility should
take away her neck ornaments, and we saw her most
white bosom, her rounded breasts, and her milky
throat.’ It was ‘ with a good courage ’ therefore that
they prepared for their return journey, the Kmg
presenting them with a costly golden chain apiece,
and promising to send a special ambassador to the
Palsgrave, to settle the matter.

Now ‘ the Prince was a gentleman who was always
content with everything, if but one hope remained
to him, whereon he might fix his thoughts.’ So he
took the news not unkindly. The envoys, indeed,
reminded him of the habits of the French : of how
they were given to much deception, to luxury and to
lightness ; and of how evil a reputation had even their
most eminent women.^ But Frederick would not
allow his spirits to be damped, and made chivalrous
excuses for the ladies, maintaining that this was only
said by such as did not pass their lives among men
and were not used to foreign peoples. Germans,
especially, would never try anything to which they
were not accustomed. Indeed, ‘ as the proverb saith,

‘Vidisse se mulieres palam non veritas admittere deoscuiationes
▼ircHTum et manuum in sinom injectiones et ad talia faciles fiiisse quas
postmodum in servanda pudicia constantissunas deprehendisset.’

p. 179.) Nor is Brantome less explicit. The manners of
the French Court had certainly declined since the sober days of Anne
of Brittany, a fact which Henry Estienne attributes to Italian influ-
ence : ‘ On n’oyoit point parler de ces vil^nies,’ writes the old
Huguent^ 'auparavant qu’on sgeust si bien parler italien en France.’
To judge, however, from such testimony as the Zimmerische Ckronik
or Wedel’s Mausbttck, the German ladies were not much better.

3S2 the adventures of a palsgrave

Germans are as favourable to Frenchmen as dog to
wolf,’ and he had himself seen how that those French
women who showed themselves most frivolous towards
men knew well how steadfastly to defend then-
honour and chastity. Nor would he think evil of the
Lady Isabeau, since she had a King for her brother
whose wife was the God-fearing ornament of all
womanhood, and without doubt watched over her,
‘ permitting nothing of that whereof the common folk
murmured.’

So Hubertus went to meet the French ambassador
at Spires, and— since the Electoral Council, filled with
distrust, declined to allow his reception at Heidel-
berg — brought him by devious ways and unused
paths to the Palsgrave. D’Isernay, the envoy, was
overflowing with zeal and amiability, but when the
questions of dowry and succession arose he, as usual,
blandly prevaricated, sajdng that this had not been
thought out by the King, who had not known whether
or no the Palsgrave agreed to the marriage. Back,
therefore, he was sent post-haste, the richer for a
goodly sword whose hilt was of pure gold and
worth two hundred ducats. And the Palsgrave
waited.

And the waiting was long. For Francis had in the
meanwhile departed to Marseilles, and was occupied
with arranging a marriage between his son, the Duke
of Orleans, and Catherine de’ Medici. Moreover,
Henry VIII. of England, ‘ having pushed the Emperor's
aunt from his bed,’ had entered — so they were told —
into an alliance with the French King whereby neithei'
was to undertake anything without the other’s consent
And consent to the Palsgrave’s marriage Henry now
withheld. The envoy, therefore, though he continued
to write consoling letters, and to hold out the most
rare and radiant hopes, did not return.

Guessing something of the truth, and having pre-
served, it would appear, an encouraging recollection
of the amiability of the English monarch, Frederick

HUBERTUS IN ENGLAND

at length resolved to send an embassy to England*
to soften the heart of Henry. So on October 26, in
the year 1533, the worthy Hubertus, primed with
instructions, arrived in Calais.*

Here he was kept for a week, since so great a storm
was raging that ‘none could be found to dare the
water, the more that it was the Feast of St. Simon and
St. Jude.’ Eight ships, indeed, went to the bottom,
and with his own eyes he saw the wrecks of three.
None the less, he continues, not without a certain
pride in his own recklessness, ‘ tired of lying still, I
hired a ship and some strong young sea-folk, who
were ready to dare the danger.’ An Englishman, who
was also hastening to King Henry, besought him in
fluent French to be of good courage, since at the full
of the moon all would go well ; so at the tenth hour
of the night, the weather being calm, they left the
harbour. Scarcely had they gone a league from the
shore, ‘ when the sea arose, and drove us so high aloft
that at the sight of the swelling billows, I thought
verily to be between mountains. The ship’s folk did
what they could, but when a great wave broke into
the hinder part of the vessel and well-nigh covered us,
they began with loud voice to call for the mercy of
God and the help of St. James, to tear forth their hair,
and to cry that all of us were lost. And so verily
would we have been, had not the young Englishman
taken a piece of rope in his hand and beaten them
therewith, and called them knaves and fools, and
threatened to kill them did they not fulfil their
appointed tasks. To me, who was middling sea-sick,

* A letter has been preserved from Frederick to Henry VIII. saymg
that the Palsgtrave was greatly delighted by the king’s letter, brought
to him by s<»ne noble youths from England. As the king desires
Um to send scsne one to him well informed of his mind, he sends his
secretary, Hubert Thomas. Amberg, Sept. 7, 1533. {.Letters astd
Pesters, Henry VIII., vol. vi.)

* Among the papers drawn up with a view to a meeting of the
EngUsh Parliament in this autumn of 1533, is a notice ‘ to relate to
the King of a certain gentleman being at Calais, come from the
Coontye Palentyne.’

354 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

he taught how to pump out the water, and this I
performed diligently— although I was not rightly
myself— the whole night through, even till at the
break of morning the winds fell, and we saw the
mountains of England spread out before us.’ They
rested till it was fully light, when they perceived that
they were lying off Sandwich, and near to an island
called Fever. Whereafter they were taken off the
ship in small boats, and carried ‘ on neck or back ’ to
land.

On learning of Hubertus’ arrival in London, King
Henry commanded * the knight Thomas Cromwell, his
Keeper of the Privy Seal, and foremost Councillor and
governor in the supreme administration of the English
Church,’ to lodge him comfortably and to provide him
with all necessaries. ‘ Who did this as well as had I
been verily a great lord ; and sometimes all the lords
of the Court invited me to the noonday and the evening
meal, when all was ordered in the stateliest fashion ;
sometimes the ladies bade me to dinner or supper
(Jentacula vel merendas)^ whereat nothing that might
be agreeable to me was lacking. Did I excuse myself
for being too small for such honours, they replied : he
who had sent me was worthy of yet greater distinc-
tions, and the King willed it so.’

This year of 1533 was, indeed, a strange, but not
inauspicious, moment for a German to visit England.
In May the marriage of Catherine of Aragon, the
‘ Aimt of Germany,’ had been pronounced by Cranmer
to be null and void, and a shining, shouting pageant
had gone its way through the streets of London to
crown the subtle head of Anne Boleyn. In September
Elixabeth was born, and Mary, Princess Royal and
dose cousin to the Emperor, was abased from her high
estate, and sent to reside, as a mere lady of the Court,
in the household of her supplanter. And in November,
at the very time of the visit of Hubertus, a commission,
composed of Cromwell, Cranmer and Latimer, was
^ See Illustrative Notes, 6i.

HENRY VIII

355

sitting at Lambeth engaged in unravelling the threads
of a formidable conspiracy against the life of the King,
in which Catherine and the Catholic party in the
country were said to be deeply implicated. It was
natural, therefore, that Henry should welcome an
envoy from Germany with the most anxious cordiality,
and the fact that the Palsgrave was a friend and
loyal supporter of Charles doubtless but added to his
zeal.

Hubertus fully realised this condition of affairs. ‘ I
heard from the merchants that the King was afraid of
the Emperor, for that he had put away his aunt ; that
he was distrustful of the King of France because of his
alliance with the Pope, of whom again he was in awe
for the same reasons and for others of religion ; and
that in consequence he sought friendship in Germany.'
The politic Netherlander played his part, therefore,
like a man. ‘ I was so consoled by this confidence,’ he
declares, ‘ that I spoke without reserve to the King.’ ‘

Now the Palsgrave had instructed his ambassador —
or, rather, his ambassador had instructed the Palsgrave
— that the method of attack should be this : first, to
remind Henry how, in the war with France, Frederick
had served England without wage, and how, while
other princes had been rewarded, he alone had been
allowed to depart with scarce a word of thanks ; next,
to point out that Frederick had since served many
other potentates, who had all recompensed him for the
expense of his equipment with a guerdon ‘that he
could show to strangers’; and finally, to beg some small
gift from the monarch as a sign that the Palatine’s
services had not been disagreeable to English Majesty.
On the top of this \vere to be thrown in a few state-
ments r^arding Frederick’s matrimonial affairs, and
some discreet hints concerning the present condition
of the negotiations with France.

* ^The Secretary of the Duke of Bavaria, Mr. Hubertus Thomas,
has shown much his master’s mind to the King,’ writes Cromwell to
Ciirii^oiter Mont. (Z, €md P., Mefpy VIII^ voL vi.)

356 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

All this duly took place, and so brilliant was the
diplomacy of Hubertus that Henry, far from being
offended, evinced a lively pleasure in the envoy’s
company. ‘ The King,’ he says, ‘ often summoned me
to him and conversed with me, sometimes sitting,
sometimes walking up and down.’ He knew how
matters had been going in France, and described the
French sovereign as very vacillating, while of the
Emperor he declared that the Palsgrave should have
no confidence in him, since Charles was not accustomed
to do good to his friends, and thought only of how to
stuff his own sack. He also recommended the annalist
to return through France to discover the cause of the
silence of D’Isemay, promising to order his own
ambassador to make every inquiry into the matter. In
brief, ‘ he gossipped of many high things.’

Nor were politics their only play, and on one
occasion this curiously assorted couple engaged in a
contest from which they emerged — Henry with
triumph, and Hubertus with perhaps something less
than his customary dignity. For one day, when the
two had strolled up and down conversing for some
time, Henry felt thirsty; so he sent for two great
goblets, filled, the one with wine, the other with beer.
The envoy should choose and empty one of these, he
declared, and himself should ‘drink out’ the other,
‘that I might learn that Englishmen, yea, even the
King himself, could drink in right German fashion,
and assure my Prince that in England, where he much
wished to see him, there were folks who could keep
him company in drink.’ Hubertus, with a praise-
worthy primness, replied that this was as little his
custom as his master's, explaining that the Palsgrave
had actually instituted an Order and distributed rings
— ‘whereof I showed him one’ — as a pledge against
this ‘ draining at a draught,’ and that all the members
of the Company of the Golden Ring were forbidden
to ‘ drink out.’ The King answered rather angrily that
Palsgrave Frederick had no authority in England,

THE GOLDEN RING 357

where himself alone was lord and emperor ; but
Hubertus still hesitated, not only, he candidly admits,
because of his scruples, but also because the great
goblet was repugnant to him. At last Henry burst
out with an inquiry as to the manner of punishment
that might be allotted to the crime. And when the
envoy replied that the ring must be given back, and a
dollar presented to the poor : I give both for thee,

ring and dollar," he exclaimed, and, taking the beaker of
beer, emptied it at a draught, the while I could scarce
accomplish my task with the wine in four gulpings.’ ‘

To complete the anecdote at once, the matter
weighed sorely on Hubertus’ conscience ; so the very
night that he arrived in Neumarkt, he unburdened
himself to his master, and, assembling the whole of
the dreaded Order, confessed what had occurred under
the seductive auspices of the English King. The
Companions, we read with relief, not only exonerated
their erring comrade from blame, but insisted to a man
on showing their sympathy by emptying a huge goblet
of pure gold, Henry’s offering to the Palsgrave, in the
forbidden fashion. So touched was Hubertus by this
act of self-sacrifice, that, bethinking him of the genial
tempter’s parting gift to himself — sixty specially
blessed and golden rings against the cramp ® — he dis-
tributed these among the now rejoicing company.

Meanwhile the envoy had achieved his purpose
and bidden farewell to his host, leaving behind him
an astonished and rather indignant circle of diplo-
matists, whom he had omitted to take into his confi-
dence. The whole episode had, indeed, excited much
curiosity, and not a little alarm both in French and in

‘ See lUostrative Notes, 63.

* ‘ The Kynges of Englande doth halowe every yere Crampe rynges,
the whyche rynges, wome on ones fynger, dothe helpe them the whyche
hath the Crampe.’ (Andrew Boorde.) The rings were much sought
after in Germany : ‘ I beg you earnestly,’ writes Katharina von
Schwartzbui^ to the Duke of Brandenburg, ‘ to help me if you can to
aa English nng, which serves for the hilling sickness. 1 have had one
that bekHiged to my dear mother, but I have worn it quite in two.’

358 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

Imperial breasts, and Chapuys wrote more than once
to Charles V. on the subject. The accepted explana-
tion seems to have been that the Palsgrave’s secretary
came to England merely to procure dogs and horses
for his master, who esteemed such things * more than
precious jewels.’ ^ And Henry did, in fact, add to his
gifts two hackneys and half-a-dozen hounds. But the
ambassador evidently had a suspicion that there were
graver matters under discussion, and would gladly
have made use of the opportunity afforded by a
banquet to search out the secrets of his humbler
colleague’s heart. Not for nothing, however, had
Hubertus studied the art of diplomacy, and Chapuys’
efforts were in vain.*

The party set out from Dover* in the company
of a young Polish ‘pan,’ who desired the protec-
tion of the Palatine Secretary. Hubertus sought to
avoid him, knowing ‘ that this people, like the
Bohemians, are very thievish’; but the King com-
manded his acquiescence with the comforting remark
that if any of the valuable gifts went astray, he had
plenty of others to take their place. Passing quickly
through Calais, for here also were ‘ boorish sea-folk
and cheating innkeepers to be dreaded,’ they arrived
in Paris. But all attempts at negotiation were again
useless, and Hubertus was only referred from King to
Constable, and from Constable to King. At length it
was made clear to the envoy that the real cause of the
delay was the omission, on Frederick’s part, to make
proposals concerning the secret alliance with France,
which alone had formed the spring of her sovereign’s
action in the matter. With heavy heart, therefore, he
set out for Neumarkt, nor had he one ray of hope re-
maining to light the passage of his weary steps.

The Palsgrave, indeed, was equable as ever, and

* See Illustrative Notes, 63. * IHd.^ 64.

* AnK»g the grants of November 1533 is one to ‘ Hubert Thomas,
“secretary to the Comt Palatine and Duke of Baviere” : Licence to
|Sa beyond sea, •with two servants, three horses, baggage, etc., and
money to the amoimt of 300 crowns, or less.’ (Z. and A, voL vi.)'

VANISHING PRINCESSES 359

received the woeful news with resignation. One thing
only stuck in his throat : the perfidy of Francis.
Convinced that this should not pass unrebuked, he
ordered the annalist and chancellor to return instantly
to France, not now to press the marriage, but to ex-
postulate with the King for breaking his freely-given
word. They were then to travel once more to
England to see what further comfort might be gained
from Henry.

Back therefore they went, treading the well-known
way with some despondency. Yet their sky held a
momentary brightness. For Francis, that master of
all gentle arts,' showed himself by no means unsym-
pathetic, receiving them ‘ most graciously in his own
chamber,’ and listening with patience to their com-
plaints. Indeed, when they had concluded, ‘ he smiled
very genially and said that the Prince had grown so
close to his heart that he must needs love him, even
had he murdered his father, and he would provide us
with a good answer for him.’ But, despite this cosy
brotherliness, the usual dallyings and delays ensued,
and it was only after many days that they learned
from the Constable the grievous and immedicable facts,
which briefly were that the lady, without the know-
ledge of her brother or sister, had plighted her troth
to * a young lord of Brittany,’ the Prince de Rohan.
The King, said Bourbon, was himself so angry at this
that he had sworn to look upon her face no more,
while he shamed to speak further of her with the
envoy of the Palsgrave, of whom she had proved
herself so wholly unworthy.

None the less all was not lost, for was there not
still remaining, continued the Constable hopefully,
the daughter of the Due de VendOme? Yes; and
even another lady, specified only by the pleasant if
undistinguished name of ‘ Lugi ’ : * both equally fitted
to be the wife of the Palsgrave. But Hubertus was

* ‘ Prince tout tlie4tial.’ (Sismondi, Hist, des Ftom^s.)

* witb aw asterisk.

360 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

wearied of France and her evanescent princesses, and,
despite the fact that on the following day, after Mass
in the Forest of Vincennes, Francis himself repeated
these and many other amiable offers, he would only
promise to inform Frederick of the facts, and so sternly
proceeded on his mission to the English King.

In England the chronicler was again ‘ a dear guest ’
to Henry, ^ who, when he learned what had happened,
sighed deeply over the fickleness of the French.
‘ Would to God,’ he exclaimed, ‘ that the Palsgrave had
a desire to marry any out of my kingdom: I would
not only honourably endow her for him, but do even
more.’ Hubertus rose with instant alacrity to the
occasion, which certainly held possibilities of fine
advantage. ‘Are there not then princely ladies in
England ? ’ he inquired ; and when Henry replied (‘ if
I remember right ’) that ‘ the Duke of Norfolk had one
only one,’ he continued with firmness : ‘ Your Majesty
has himself a daughter.’ The King reddened all over,
and, referring to his supposed scruples of conscience
concerning his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, re-
plied : ‘ Be it far from me, that I should serve my cousin,
the Count Palatine, with nothing better than one bom
out of marriage.'* So Hubertus, with further gifts
but little gain, returned to Germany. And Frederick
‘ saw well that all his hopes were destroyed, but bore
it, as ever, with a good and quiet heart’

VIII

Yet, patient as was the Palsgrave under these gibes

* Chapays writes to Charles V. of Henry’s special feeling for the
Coant Palatine, ‘ whom he has several times mentioned to me as ids
great friend.’ On Thomas’s arrival ‘ he said he brought news which
would be very agreeable to the King, and it seems to be so from the
good reception he has had from the lung and Cromwell.’ (Z. and P.,
Henry VIII., vol. vii.)

* In 1539 _ a draft treaty was actually drawn up for a marriage
between Ifrincess Mary and the Count Palatine Philip, nephew of
Frederick. (Z. and P., Hemyr VIII., vol. xiv. pt. ii.) He even went
so fex as to kiss her : _ ‘ which js an argument either of marriage or of
near relafronship,’ writes Marillac to Montmorency. But the Elector
Lodwig refused to append his signature, and the matter ^pped,

DOROTHEA OF DENMARK 361

and gifabettings of fate, he could not help but realise
the much that he had sacrificed for the House of
Austria, and the little (‘ save words ’) that he had won.
At the conclusion of the Diet of Augsburg, empty of
purse as of heart, he had wished to retire in peace to
his own home. Granvelle, however, had persuaded
him that it would be a lamentable deed to desert his
Emperor at so critical a moment ; ' so, to the grave
detriment of health and fortune, he had accompanied
Charles, not only on his political progresses but
also through the second Turkish campaign. His
mere money claim against the Imperial exchequer
now amounted to many tens of thousands, and had
already led to a sorrowful scene with the Emperor.
Forced by dire poverty to leave his successful soldiers
unrewarded, and again offered burdensome offices and
responsibilities, he declined to incur any further debts
on Charles’s behalf, and they parted from one another
‘ sadly and with pale countenances : the Emperor for
that he had heard the simple truth, and the Palsgrave
for remembering how often his hopes and the promises
made to him had come to naught.’

Now, therefore, sore from the strokes that he had
earned only by a rare loyalty to this ungrateful House
of Hapsburg, he could not refrain ‘ among friends ’
from a few complaints.* And these complaints reached
the ears of the King of the Romans. Ferdinand,
alarmed, at once despatched a warning to the Emperor
in Spain, and together these two monarchs wove the
net that was finally to land the not unwilling fish on
the pleasant shores of matrimony.

For Charles and Ferdinand possessed a niece. And
the niece was in a parlous position. In truth, Dorothea

’ Germany is now ‘ very trubylleus and full of roore,’ wrote Heyth
to Cromwell.

* For his complaints to the Emperor and their reception see Lanz,
C&rrespm^enss von ICorls V.^ i. On one occasion Charles declares
his cimms to be exkorbiiantes^ but admits that his services are of great
use, Frederick might have echoed the words of Margaret Paston :

‘ We beat the bushes, and have the loss and the disworship, and other
have the birds/

362 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

of Denmark, aged fifteen years, sorely needed the
protection of a strong and influential husband. Her
father, the infamous King Christian IL, had been
deposed by an uncle, and imprisoned for the term of
his life. But the usurper was now dead, and the
council of the kingdom, buoyant with a new and un-
accustomed authority, had decided to bestow the
crown on Dorothea, King Christian’s elder daughter.
This little princess, who was still in the charge of her
aunt, Queen Mary of Hungary, was the prize offered
to the Palsgrave. For ‘the Emperor and I,’ said
Ferdinand with decision, ‘will that you and none
other shall be King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway,
and our nephew-in-law.’

The Palsgrave was at first ‘quite confounded’ by
this proposition, and spoke with pathos to the King of
his earnest longing for rest, and of how, being already
fifty years old, with hair and beard growing grey and
the strength of his body declining, he was little fitted
to be the husband of so youthful a lady, and the ruler
of unruly peoples, who had declined to submit even to
a sovereign in the heyday of life. But Ferdinand
overruled all his objections ‘ so well and tersely,’ and
besought the Prince so earnestly to stretch forth his
hand with confidence to the happiness which Heaven
was sending him, that Frederick at last consented.

And now there began for him a period of arduous
exertions and anxieties. For there were two other
candidates in the field : the deposed and imprisoned
Christian, whom the Count of Oldenburg was
vigorously striving to rescue, and another Christian,
son to Duke Frederick of Holstein.

Hubertus was despatched to Denmark to inquire
into the matter, but he found the kingdom in an uproar,
and none to pay him honour. He therefore returned
with more speed than dignity, and was soon journeying
by way of the Netherlands to Spain to discuss the
difficulties of the business with the Emperor. He met
Charles in Madrid, and had much intimate talk, both

BETROTHAL 363

with him and with Granvelle. The gist of the matter
was this ; that unless the princess was heavily dowered,
the whole advantage of the transaction would lie with
the Hapsburgs. ‘The Emperor,’ said the cautious
annalist to the Chancellor, ‘ is presenting us with a
bird which is yet winging the open skies, and may
not easily or perchance ever be caught ; and therefore
he must do something further.’ It was finally decided
that the lady should be allotted the same dowry as her
sister the Duchess of Milan, receiving moreover as a
wedding gift the sum of 50,000 golden crowns, to
be paid within three years, either by the Fuggers or
the Welsers. And Hubertus, satisfied, set out for
home.

He reached Neumarkt at ten o’clock on the night
of New Year’s Eve, and made his way unnoticed to
the Palsgrave’s bedroom. The Prince lay already in
bed, conversing with his attendants concerning the
secretary's return, and promising to whomsoever
should first announce his arrival a goodly guerdon.

‘ I held back, and showed myself to the court barber,
who thereupon screamed : “ He is here, give me the
evangelium.” ’ The Prince received the envoy joy-
fully, and when, complaining of fatigue, this hero
proposed to delay the tale of his accomplishments till
the following day, ‘ Tell it me,’ cried Frederick, ‘ in
three words 1 ’ So Hubertus answered : ‘ “ I bring my
lord a wife, a most gracious Emperor, and a reasonable
dowry.” And he thanked God with lifted hands, and
said : “ Go in God’s name. My kitchen and my
cellar are, as thou knowest, open to thee.” I laughed,
and said that such-like was but for parasites, bade
him good-night, and went.’

All now seemed to be flowing smoothly. But there
were still some rocks in the stream ; for the Elector
and Council of the Palatinate, considering that the
wedding gift of 50,000 crowns was not sufficient,
insisted on a re-opening of the negotiations. Frederick,
therefore, impatient and ‘thinking it well that he

364 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

should at the last do something for himself,’ decided
to go in person to Spain ; and a few weeks later, in
the company of his secretary and his chancellor,
he arrived in the little town of Bellpuig, in time to
see Charles performing his Maundy Thursday cere-
monies, and washing the feet of the poor. Nor were
Hubertus and the ‘learned Dr. Hartmannus’ to be left
without a forcible reminder of the sanctity of the
season and the rigid orthodoxy of Spain. For while
Frederick was discussing the state of affairs with his
sovereign, these two journeyed to Montserrat, ^ in the
hope of passing a pious and peaceful Good Friday
night. But peace was not to be their portion, for the
hunger of the chancellor proved altogether too much
for his piety. Declining to be satisfied with the
meagre salads of the Order — and even these should
properly have been avoided on so sacred an occasion —
Hartmannus would, despite his comrade’s agonised
remonstrances, ‘ by all means and force have eggs,
and when the brothers perceived this stiffneckedness,
they began to cry aloud that he was a Lutheran, and
must be pointed out to the Inquisition.’ Hubertus
quieted them as best he could, representing his friend
as ‘ a Flemish sow, who believed neither in God nor
in aught else.’ But it was only after an anxious night
that the two Germans found themselves on the road
to Barcelona, wondering as they went — for the spring
was still young — that already the cherry-trees were
dropping ripe fruit, and the fields whitening to harvest,*

In the great sea-port they rejoined the princes ;
and here the little party remained, settling all that
was necessary to the conclusion of the marriage, till
Andreas Doria arrived with his fleet to escort Charles
on his expedition against the notorious Barbarossa.
The Emperor and the Palsgrave then parted on the
most brotherly terms, and, so soon as Frederick

* A rock ‘of a league high,’ on which were perched thirteen
hermitages, ‘ all lovely, holy, and strange to behold.’ (Lalamg.)

* See Illustrative Notes, 65.

A MASTER OF DELAYS 365

had seen his Imperial master safe on board the
captain-galley — ‘ the most beautiful, complete, and large
affair ever beheld upon the sea, all covered and
ramparted with banners, standards and ensigns,’ ^
blazoned with the arms of the Empire and the
insignia of the Crucified Christ — he set out for
the Netherlands, where the formal betrothal was to
take place.

But the little bride was not to set eyes on her
future lord as quickly as had been intended, for in
Paris he found a pressing invitation from King
Francis to visit him at Rouen, and, moved perhaps by
the desire to point out to the perfidious monarch that
young and lovely brides could be won otherwhere
than in France, to Normandy he went. Here, more-
over, he was kept waiting in growing impatience and
anxiety for ten whole days, since despite the proffered
hospitality there was no sign of his host.

Now the causes of this seeming neglect were,
declares Hubertus, twofold. First (this was rumour)
that it was done as a jest, in order to delay the eager
groom, and ‘ keep him from the bride for whom his
heart was yearning.’ Secondly (and this, it appears,
was truth) because Francis was feverishly occupied
in putting finishing touches, for the benefit of his
distinguished military guest, to one of his newly
created regiments.

The King of France was, in fact, engaged in re-
modelling his army. The disgrace of Pavia had
open'ed his eyes to the military needs of his kingdom,*
and no sooner was the country at peace than he began
to prepare her for a renewal of war. In the year
preceding this of the Palsgrave's visit he had issued
two ‘ ordonnances,’ one of which placed the French
cavalry on a new basis, while the other extracted — or

^ Gnillatime de Montoche. des Souv, des Pays-Bas.^ vol. iii.)

* * Le Roy voyant la subjection en laquelle ilz [les Suisses] le tenoient,
il en fnt ennuy^ tant, comme diet est, qu’il s*en deffit, et au lieu d^eulx,
il cr€a et estabik en son royaume quarante-hukt mil hommes, gens
de pied, pemr estre ses souldoyez.’ (Journal d^un Bourgeois de Paris

366 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

sought to extract— from the reluctant populations of
the great kingdom a cheap and serviceable force
of foot soldiers. Seven ‘ home-grown ’ legions there
were to be, and each legion was to consist of six
companies of i,ooo men apiece, and to bear the nami»
of the province whence it sprang.^ Of these new
regiments it was that of Normandy, consisting, says
Hubertus, of ‘ taller and stronger men than the other
Frenchmen, seeing that they have their origin from
the midnight Germans,’ that the Palsgrave was to
have the honour of inspecting.^

Meanwhile, the King continued to postpone the
reception of his guest, alleging as excuse now illness,
now business, and now sport. Frederick, however,
grew at last so clamorous that Francis, yielding, came
to Rouen and carried him off to 'a castle’ nine miles
from the town, where, to make up for his apparent
churlishness, he entertained him in friendly splendour,
‘with all manner of hunting and lordly recreations
with falcons.’ He even, adds Hubertus, ‘ gave him his
own bed to sleep in, wherein the Prince also admitted
me, since else I had been forced to put up with a seat.
My lord was, moreover, fed from the royal kitchen, and
the three young sons of the King® were ever about
him, having their meals with him and providing him
with all that caused delight.’

When two days had elapsed, the princes returned
by river to Rouen. And now the Germans were
privileged to obtain a glimpse of the nobler side of

‘ So strictly were the men and oflScers to be drawn from the mother-
province, that any man who sought to exchange from one legion to
another was to be * pendu et etrangld par la gorge.’ On the other
hand, any soldier who distinguished himself was to be rewarded by
a golden ring, *lequel il portera k son doigt pour mdmoire de sa
prouesse.’ (Du Bellay.)

* The ambassador, Marino Giustiniani, who was also present, seems
to have been more correct in saying that the legions of Normandy,
Brittany, and Languedoc were ‘ little apt to war.’ (Tommases, 1. 1 .)

* The Dauphin Frangois, aged 19 ; Henri Due d’Orldans, aged 16,
alrea% married to Catherine de’ Medici ; and Charles Due d’Angoul^me^

14^

THE KING’S TABLE 367

that Phcebus of France, whose brilliant and invincible
versatility has proved a stumbling-block to so many
historians. For, as they journeyed, they read, ‘ accord-
ing to the custom of the King, somewhat by the way,
to which end there was in readiness the Thucydides,
newly done into French for the King. This he and the
learned folk who stood round him so elegantly ex-
pounded that may I be damned if ever journey seemed
so short to me, albeit the sailing lasted from morning
even until night.’

‘ Indeed,’ continues Hubertus, in eloquent defence of
the much-discussed monarch, ‘ many praise this King
for that he loves letters and the lettered, promotes
study, and encourages schools. On the other hand,
he is also blamed for being too greatly given over to
women, and for not keeping his word and his promise.
Yet, apart from adulation, I must say that I, who have
often stood before tables where kings and the Pope,
cardinals and bishops, have had their meals, remember
no such learned table — so to express myself— as this
of the King of France. For at it there was ever reading,
debate and discourse ; and none was so learned that
he learned not more therefrom, none so experienced
that he did not gain further experience, none so
valiant a warrior but he might here find a better
beside him. Yea, if one may dip so low, should even
a smith, a gardener, or a tiller of the ground chance to
be of the company, he would — at least, if the King
himself had discoursed of the matter— not without
instruction have gone away.^ And this notwithstand-
ing that the said King had a certain impediment in his
speech, for his uvula had been injured by illness, and
only those who were accustomed thereto could easily
understand him.’

At last the day arrived for which the Germans
had so long been kept waiting, and Francis invited

* *La table du Roy estoit tine vraye escolle,’ writes Brantdme :

‘ Y estoit receu qui venoit ; mais il ne felloit pas qu’il fust asne ny qu’il
linmcbast, car il estoit bientost relevd de luymesme.’

368 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

Frederick to walk with him to the camp. Here there
were ‘ lovely tents and high spying-places ’ arranged,
from which the new regiment could be observed
in all its evolutions. Here, too, were great pieces
of artillery, which at the King’s word were to be
discharged.

When the royal party had taken up its position, the
famous Norman regiment ‘ was led round and about,
wheeling this way and that ; and they sounded the
trumpets with the field-drums, or blew upon them, till
they rang through the air. After this they began to
skirmish with one another, and to loose off their
pieces with such a crackling that the earth quaked.’
Unfortunately, the earth was not the only thing that
trembled, for many of the raw young peasant soldiers,
who had never before seen any firing, made no doubt
that the attack was a real one, and, being exceedingly
alarmed, ducked and dived in every possible direction.
At this they were roundly jeered by the spectators,
‘ but the King saw it with sorrow, holding it to be a
disgrace.' ^ Hubertus admits, however, that their fears
were not wholly without foundation, for the great
cannon were trained unpleasantly low, while, not far
from the artillery, there was an immense quantity of
gunpowder in sacks, which suddenly exploded, pro-
ducing a horrifying spectacle of burnt faces and limbs
calculated to unnerve even a more hardened army

Francis looked long and silently at his new troops,
then turned to his visitor. ‘ I do not know, cousin
Palsgrave,’ he began, ‘whether it is owing to the
neglect of my ancestors or from intentional action on
their part, that the French nation, once so warlike
and so valiant, has now fallen into such grievous decay
and decrepitude, that no foreign war can be carried
through without foreign soldiers.’ Of French horse-
men, he continued, there were plenty, but of French
footmen there were none; and he, for his part, had

‘ Da Bellay declares that the king ‘se contenta fort’ of ‘ladite
1^^ de Normandie.’

THE LEGIONS OF FRANCIS 369

sought to supply this lack from among the peasantry
who were commonly used for tillage only. By this
arrangement the nation would be trained, while great
sums would be kept in the country, which had before
been given to the foreign mercenaries. His plan had
been that of the Romans: to enlist six* legions,
amounting in all to fifty thousand picked men, ‘You
judge of a lion by his claws : behold these bodies, so
big and robust, and not devoid, I hope, of spirit.
When inured by custom, I believe that they will excel.’
Finally, the King pressed the Palsgrave, as the most
renowned and experienced of German soldiers, for his
judgment on all that he had seen and heard ; and when
he noticed a certain look of deprecation on the face of
his guest : ‘ Proceed,’ he exclaimed, ‘ I command you to
keep nothing back.’

Frederick was now in a difficult position, as his was
a conservative nature, and his military sympathies
were against the innovations of Francis and the
revolutionary maxims of The Art oj War} Beginning,
however, with a modest disclaimer of the royal compli-
ments on his own capacity, he pointed out the efforts
of the former kings of France to wean their subjects
from a lust for battle to a love for tillage and agri-
culture. Rather did they spend the money for the
hiring of foreign soldiers, than make use of their own
people at the peril of internal peace. In time of war,
also, the greater nobles were wont to consult their
own interests alone; so might, to the serious detri-
ment of the country, lead the country’s children over
to the enemy. On the other hand, he could not
blame the King’s desire for reform. The new soldiers
were tall and strong, and doubtless, when better

* The niimber was really seven.

* Or of Utopia. The whole of this conversation recalls the argu-
ment in Sir ITioinas More’s first chapter, in which Hythlodaye bases
his plea for the abolition of mercenaries on the ‘peraycyous and
pestyknte* state of aliairs in France, brought about by those ^wise-
iR>o!es and very archedoltes,’ who thought the wealth of the country
to consist in ‘ jnractysed souldyoors and cunnynge mansleers.’

370 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

practised, would also acquire courage. To be strong
and ignorant was often, indeed, harmful, but if expe-
rience were added, there would in time arise a true
manliness, resolute in misfortune, without fear of
death, preferring to reach victory by the laying
down of life, rather than to escape with dishonour.
Courage, valour and constancy could be induced
only by order and discipline, through willingness to
suffer, self-control and fear of superiors : in which
qualities the German soldier excelled. For, though
laden with many burdens, the landsknecht preserved
a singular awe. If he chanced to desert, he must
lead a life of misery and loneliness, since all men held
him for a knave, and none would befriend him ; and
this made the faint-hearted ones so wretched that
they would rather perish than abandon the flag.
Francis must judge whether these sentiments were
likely to flourish among his people. The French
soldiers might, indeed, soon rival the German, but,
taught by them, would they not return to their own
countiy stiff-necked, given over to drunkenness, prone
to quarrellings and blows, avid of vengeance and apt
to anger at the smallest word ?

The King listened with attention to the Palsgrave’s
words, often nodding his head in assent; but he
answered nothing, and, as evening was drawing in,
they returned to the city. The next day, however, he
showed a generous appreciation of Frederick’s candour,
telling the Prince that the speech had given rise to hot
argument, and that though he himself had agreed with
the criticisms, other high authorities had taken them
ill, deeming the French nation insulted. ‘ And whether
from this or another cause,’ concludes Hubertus, ‘ the
King soon disbanded his six regiments and would not
use them.’ As a matter of fact, the Count Palatine’s
prediction was fulfilled to the letter, and such grave
obstacles arose from the inexperience and indiscipline
of the new soldiers that when, only two years later,
Francis was again engaged in hostilities with the

REMINISCENCE 371

Emperor, a considerable portion of his army consisted
of German troops.*

Frederick now girded himself for departure, receiving
from Francis, as a reward for his plain speaking, a gift,
an explanation and a warning. The gift was a con-
venient one : six thousand crowns. The explanation
was also welcome, as it assured the confiding Palsgrave
that the King’s shifty conduct had been due to the
machinations of others. The warning was even
more important : ‘ You shall see,’ said Francis, ‘ how
little I wish to do you an injury.’ Not long before
there had come a certain noble of Germany, revealing
himself as Frederick’s deadly enemy, and offering
splendid bribes for permission to attack the traveller
on the French frontier. ‘ I have forbidden him with
threats to touch you, but he is now lurking in the
Castle of Sedan with Robert de la Marck. In my
dominions you are safe from him, but, once out of
them, look to yourself.’ As a matter of fact, this
warning was all that they heard of the business;
but it caused the little party to travel with watchful
alertness, the Chancellor especially, mocks Hubertus,
being ‘ violently alarmed, and thinking every horseman
we met to be Rosenberg.’

Before leaving, however, another and a dearer task
befeU the Palsgrave : to wit, a visit to the Queen,
the jocund Eleonore of his early dreams. With her
‘he spoke long of his old love’; but she would not
allow that she had ever really thought of taking him
as a husband, declaring it to have been merely the play
and pleasantry of youth. She even greatly extolled the
Portuguese wedding, and the loving attentions of that
aged King, ‘ the like of which befell her no longer with
the King of France, by whom she was held of little ac-
count’ This fact the Prince heard not ungladly, ‘ albeit
he bore himself as though he felt sympathy for her.’

* ‘ At the moment of my departure the king had already in his pay
fimr thousand landsknedits, masterless adventurers of Lower Germany.’
(Giusdiuani.) And see Illustrative Notes, 66.

372 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

They also talked of the little bride of Denmark, and
Eleonore said that she held her in affection, and
should she never have a daughter of her own, she
would make this niece her heiress. Nor, indeed, was
this the end of her kindness, for when, after the formal
betrothal at Brussels, the little lady was setting forth
for the Palatinate, the aunt, with a charming senti-
mentality that seems to belie her protestations regard-
ing the early romance, insisted on going to see her at
Camerich. And though, by the simplicity of her litter
and the meagreness of her escort, the Queen of France
made no great show beside the splendours of Austria
(and Queen Mary of Hungary, who was managing the
business, ‘ particularly desired to display her magnifi-
cence to the French ’), yet the affability of Eleonore
was amply worthy of the gracious traditions of her
youth.

Here, then, in the little town of Camerich, were
the three brightest of Frederick’s dream princesses
gathered together, and here — ^in calm and kindly retro-
spection, and on a note of comedy — was the wheel of
his courtships welded to its perfect round. Yet his
tragedies were by no means overpast. ‘The Prince,’
comments Hubertus grimly, ‘thought that through
marriage he would reach the longed-for end of his
griefs and groanings, but he soon realised that now
for the first time he was verily launched on a wild and
stormy sea.’

The marriage took place at Heidelberg in the Septem-
ber of the year 1535, ‘with many dishes and dances,’
jigs and jousts. Above four thousand guests were
counted, and the Palsgrave, ‘who dearly loved to
sparkle,’ set himself with determined will to enjoy
ttet ‘ jo3iful day that cometh to a man but once in a
lifetime.’

HONEYMOON

373

But scarcely had the honeymoon begun when
urgent letters reached him concerning the state of
Denmark. And at once, and for many months, all
thought and action was directed towards the rescue of
his royal hopes from the grip of the Count of Olden-
burg. His exchequer, moreover, grew daily leaner
and yet more lean, and soon, far from ascending the
high and ancient throne of the Danes, he was igno-
miniously diminishing the already modest dignity of
his Palatine household and establishment

Worn with strife and anxiety, and crippled with
debt, the Palsgrave determined at length to make his
difficulties the excuse for a holiday. Charles was
again in Spain, with a mouth full of promises, and to
Charles he would go; Eleonore was in France, with a
heart (he hoped) not unmindful of her former love,
so to Eleonore he would go; while Henry was in
England, with an affection for his ‘German cousin’
that might well be turned to account. Dorothea
should accompany him ; nor should the faithful
Hubertus, most tried and Jxavelled of secretaries, be
left behind

Behold, then, the little company setting out for a last
solemn visitation of the Courts of Europe ; not, as
might be supposed from the state of their exchequer,
with a modest competence of retinue, but garishly,
with a company of ‘ seventy horses and many useless
attendants, who could only consume, and must have
everything as abundantly as in Germany.’ Hubertus,
indeed, remembering the ‘squalor and needy naked-
ness’ both of the Spanish inns and of their own
purses, was a good deal disturbed at this, but his
wails were vain. The Princess, he owns, was not in
fault, for she had with her but two ladies and a female
fool ‘ for mirth and distraction.’ *

^ According to the Zimmeriscke Chronik Frederick was in the habit
of leaving iris purveyors of amusement in the charge of his protesting
kinsmen. On one occasion he left his English hound, his fool, and his
p^e to the care of his brother, the Bishop of Freiringen. The dog
bit the bishop so that he nearly lost Ms hand, the fool struck the

374 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

The annalist’s forebodings were amply justified, for
scarcely were they out of France than their troubles
began. They were nearly drowned in crossing the
river at Bayonne, nearly frozen in traversing the
snow-bound passes of the Pyrenees, and nearly
starved everywhere. Having rashly lingered in the
little village of Segura to celebrate the holy rites of
Christmas, they twice started in vain to climb the
lofty mountain of St. Adrian ^ that barred their way.
Each time they were overwhelmed by a terrific storm.
Once they succeeded in retracing their steps in safety
to Segura, when the Biscayans received them with
jeers, and threw snowballs at them from the windows.
But the second attempt landed the princely couple
irremediably in a snow-drift. Hubertus, by clinging
in an undignified manner to the tail of a sturdy horse,
won his way through the storm to the tunnel ® at the
summit of the mountain, where he discovered help.
He returned with many assistants to rescue his noble
patrons ; but all their efforts were fruitless until an
ingenious alcalde forced them out of the hole with a
naked sword, filling up the cavity behind him as he
did so.

Even then there was still the descent to be faced.
They could not remain in the tunnel for fear of being
snowed up and suffocated, so down they must plunge
on their perilous career. The mountain side was

bisbop with his fist so that he nearly lost his eye, and the youth made
lose' to the bishop’s lady. So the prelate restored the three treasures
with idacrity, ‘ praying him another time to seek a different raardian,
fer never ^ain would he take or keep them.’ {Zim. Chron. iv.)

* ‘ Precipices and rocks, on which a puling lover may meet with
certain death, if he has a mind to it.’ (D’Aulnoy.)

* ‘ Near the highest part of the Mount St. Adrian, you meet with an
elevated rock, which seems to have been placed in the midst of the
way to block up the passage. A tedious and pamful labour has
jBorced this mass of stone in the shape of a vault ; you may walk fisrty
or fifty paces under it without sight of day but what comes by the
overtures at each entry which are shut by great doors. You find
under this vault an inn, which is left in the winter by reason the
snows. You see here likewise a little chapel of St. Adrian and seVersd
Gstfuns where thieves ctaunonly retreat; so that it is dangeroiB
passing here without bmng in a condition of defence.’ {Ibid.)

A BITTER JOURNEY 375

steep and slippery, and the Palsgrave slid down it at a
great pace, with Hubertus’ stick between his legs, ‘ like
a boy with a hobby-horse,’ suffering indeed many falls
thereby. As for the Duchess Dorothea, supported by
her maidens, she tumbled from step to step, often
disappearing into the deep snow. When they finally
arrived at a village where they could pass the night
the ladies all fell into a faint, and were only returned
to consciousness by the prompt application of the
incomparable balm of pomegranates, which the re-
sourceful Hubertus carried ever about him.

The natives seem to have behaved throughout the
adventure in what the annalist evidently considers to
be a characteristic Spanish manner. When the party
arrived, wounded and exhausted, in any village, it was
received with hoots and snowballs. When it fell into
difficulties by the way it was instantly abandoned by
its guides. When a relief expedition was sent back to
retrieve the lame and the laggard, the succourers
devoured the provisions intended for the resuscitation
of the succoured. When the Palsgrave sought to
defray the night’s expenses with a reasonable sum, the
innkeeper first haughtily declined all remuneration
on the score of his lofty nobility, then burst into
threats of what he would do should the sum not be
trebled. Briefly, the journey was a bitter one, even
for those days of strenuous travelling. The ladies
sickened, the horses died, and the money ran short.
Yet, to her credit be it said, the little Palsgravine, ‘ to
amuse the Prince, did only laugh.’

In one village alone did the Germans meet with a
friendly reception, and this was when Hubertus
chanced upon a Spanish gentleman, to whom he had
once been hospitable in Heidelberg. The grateful
Caballero now led the annalist and six of the company
to his own house and entertained them in the most
lavish manner. The house, it is true, was small, sunk
into the earth, and filled with ‘ many sheep, goats,
hens, and other such fine and cleanly furniture.’ On

376 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

the hearth, however, was burning a fire in which hung
a roasting-spit ; and on this, ‘as it might seem,
especially for us,’ there was already frizzling a hare,
two partridges and a capon. The lady of the house —
having ‘ travelled a good part of Europe, and thereby
learned that one should ever be ready to help
foreigners’^ — was warm in her praise of Germans,
and promptly set out the banquet, while the son, who
had waded home through the snow from a neigh-
bouring village, contributed to it olives, capers, and
a mysterious fruit called mala Arecontica. The master
of the feast himself gave them much sage counsel as to
the remedies and precautions advisable on so grievous
a journey of snow and storm, recommending them
earnestly to cover their eyes with a dark veil, and to
take off their boots when they went to bed ; ‘ by
which I gathered,’ observes Hubertus approvingly,
‘ that our host was not unlettered, having probably
learned all that wisdom from Xenophon.’

At length the party — or rather, the remnants of the
party — arrived in Toledo, and were rewarded for their
pains by a really Imperial welcome. All the Spanish
grandees, who were assembled for a Cortes, rode out
in a body to greet and escort them. As for the
Emperor and Empress, they received their niece and
nephew more than graciously, visiting or entertaining
them daily, and frequently taking their meals in the
Palatine apartments, an honour which they ‘ had never
accorded even to the greatest of the Spanish princes.’
This familiarity, indeed, gave serious offence to the
haughty Spaniards, for they held that the Emperor was
‘ making himself too common ’ ; and when, to crown
the indiscretion, the Empress, whose health demanded
sunshine, was moved to a room adjoining that of the
Palsgravine, their anger passed all bounds. In fact,
the grandees now sought high and low for means to

• Perhaps she had read Thomasin von Zerklare : ‘Both women
and men ^lall honour strangers ; if the stranger be not worthy, they
have yet done honour to themselves ; and if he be worthy, then are
both hcmomed.'

THE INQUISITION 377

injure this pestilent German intruder, and brought
innumerable false accusations of every description
against his household.

Nor apparently was this a difficult matter, since the
Inquisition was in full swing, and to every Spaniard
the word German spelled also the execrated word
Lutheran. Every inn and every tavern was full of
spies, whose sole occupation was to watch the move-
ments of the hated foreigners, and so eager was their
purpose that the slightest pretext served. Hubertus’
adventure at Montserrat paled before the present pre-
dicaments of Frederick’s retinue Thus, when one of
the Imperial trabants boxed the ears of a boorish
priest, the victim swore upon the cross that his assail-
ant belonged to the Palatine party, and the accused
servant was rescued with the greatest difficulty from
the hands of the alguaziL Again, the German grooms
were in the habit of leaving the church in the middle
of the service to look after their horses, returning so
soon as the business was accomplished ; and this
raised a violent outciy among the priests. To smooth
over the matter, the Archbishop of Toledo — ‘ a good
man and a special friend of the Prince ’ — arranged that
the Germans should have a private sacrijficulus and a
private Mass at whatever hour suited them. Instantly
a new complaint arose that the worshippers did not
follow the whole service on their knees, but spent part
of the time walking up and down in the church.
When it was pointed out that the Spaniards did the
same : ‘ That is quite a different matter,’ was the reply ;
‘you come from the land of heresy, and must keep
yourselves above suspicion.’ Once more the little
company sought the help of the Archbishop, and he
secretly advised them to keep away from the Mass
altogether. On no account, however, were they to
mention his counsel, since ‘ he was as little secure as
they were from the Inquisitors and heresy-mongers,
with which the Court was beset.’ The Germans now
had a short interval of peace, till, unluckily, one of

378 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

their number, while laden with a sack of barley, was
moved to kneel down and adore the passing Host. At
once a priest fell upon him with feet and fists, and
haled him to the authorities. Finally, several of the
party were accused of eating on Ash Wednesday the
remains of Shrove Tuesday’s feast. And at this gross
calumny — the hungry Hartmannus was not of the party
—the Palsgrave, past patience and fearing some tragic
conclusion, complained to the Emperor. Even here,
however, he gathered but little consolation, since
Charles could only reply that he himself was no less
continually tormented. Yet, should God spare his life
for a few years longer, added the monarch, ‘ he, whom
they called but a Flemish pig {porcum Flamminkum)
would teach them to treat their King a trifle better
than heretofore. And this he said, so some thought,
with reference to his mother, who yet lived, and by
reason of whom the Spaniards held that the Emperor
had not yet full power to govern.’

In consequence of these discomforts,^ the Palsgrave
began to think of departure. But the Danish question,
with its dismal train of debts and deficits, was yet to
be settled, and there was also the serious dilemma of
funds for their immediate wants. This part, at least,
Hubertus could attend to ; so, requesting an interview
with Charles, he laid the matter before him, not
omitting to enumerate the terrible expenses to which
this journey had compelled his master. When the
Emperor asked why they had brought so vast a retinue
to a land which it was well known could feed but a few,
* We did it for honour’s sake,’ replied Hubertus, 'so
as not to make too poor a show in France.’ Charles
laughed and answered ; ‘ Say, rather, for my cousin’s
sake.’ Knowing, however, what manner of men the

* ZimmeriscJie Chromk speaks of the great ‘ knavery, un&ith,
and disHonour* with which Frederick was treated even by some of
Charles’s Netherland nobles on this occasion. ‘ It was a journey like
that whereof one reads in the Round Table, when King Ban of Benote
jcrarneyed to King Arthur of Britain his lord for help and the pre-
servatm df his country, and gained little thereby.’

PARIS 379

Germans were, ‘ who must ever eat five times in the
day,’ he agreed to allow the 1,300 ducats a month, for
which the annalist applied.

But soon a great misfortune befell, for ‘ the pious
Empress, our best hope,’ died, and Charles was too
deeply immersed in grief to turn his mind to Danish
matters. The Palsgrave therefore took his departure
with ceremony and a sum of 7,000 ducats in solid cash.
‘ And when I shook these out on the table I thought
that the lovely doubloons would have somewhat
moved him ; but he said that he could not understand
how anybody could care for money. For his part, he
rejoiced only in spending it’ And, indeed, he and his
wife had already spent so much in Toledo that their
baggage now required thirty mules, in the stead of six,
to transport it, and that even the Palsgrave himself
‘ became rather tired thereof’ ; while the most of the
Emperor’s guerdon was at once dispatched to Neumarkt,
for the building of a new kitchen,^ although, as
Hubertus not impertinently observed to him, ‘ what is
the use of a kitchen, if we have nothing to cook in it ? ’
‘ God will provide,’ said the Prince, trustful as the
prophet of old.

As a fact, Francis of Valois was privileged to be the
provider of their immediate needs, for on their arrival
in Paris, moved by their misery, he furnished them
with both money and a commodious lodging, declaring
magnificently that as King of France he had enough
for all. Here, therefore, the princely couple lived for
a time in pomp and elegance, running up bills at their
desire and at their host’s charge to the amount of 3,000
crowns, and being visited constantly by the highest in
the land. It was now, indeed, that Hubertus met
that matchless Marguerite of Navarre, whose ' lofty and
reasonable converse concerning things theological so
immeasurably refreshed’ him, and of whom he tells

* Frederick had probably been moved to envy by the sight of one
ci the excellent French kitchens of the period. Tasso declared the
kitchen of the hosjiital at Bayonne to be comparable for its beauty to
the arsenal at Venice. {Ilpadfne d£

380 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

with tenderness the anecdote that is probably more
widely known than all the rest of his writings
together,

‘ Nor can I here be silent,’ he begins, ‘ concerning
what the Queen herself told me of that learned man
Fabre de St. Staples, who, when the teachers and
confessors of the evangelical truth were persecuted in
France, had made his escape by flight, and come to
Gascony.’ Marguerite, it appears, had one day sent
word to the worthy divine that she would take the
midday meal at his house, bringing with her sundry
philosophers in whose conversation she took particular
pleasure. During the meal Fabre began to be
exceedingly sad, and now and again to weep. When
the Queen asked why he did this, when she had come
to him in order to be gay, he replied : ' How shall I
be merry, most august Queen, or make others merry,
being the greatest sinner and most evil knave upon
earth?’ ‘Dear Monsieur Jacques,’ she said amazed,
‘what manner of great sin can you have committed,
since from your youth up, meseems, you have led a
blameless life?’ ‘I am,’ he answered, ‘one hundred
and one years of age, and pure of all taint of woman,
nor can I remember ever to have burdened my
conscience with aught by reason whereof I might be
afraid to die, save one thing only.’ The Queen still
pressed him to tell, so though for weeping he could
scarce utter the words he spoke : ‘ How can I stand
before God’s Judgment Seat, seeing that I have taught
the holy gospel, clean, pure and clear, to so many,
who, following my teaching, have suffered a thousand
toiments and martyrdoms, yea even death : and yet
am myself secretly fled away, who in mine inconstancy
should not have avoided death, but rather have sought
for it ? ’

Queen Marguerite, who was eloquent of speech, and
versed in the Holy Scriptures, remonstrated with
many reasons and ensamples, showing him that the
same had happened to other holy men, and that he

MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE 381

ought not to despair of God^s grace and mercy. And
as all who were present agreed, he was little by little
comforted. At last he said : * Then there remaineth
to me nothing, save to betake myself on the journey to
God the Lord, whensoever it shall please Him, and
to make my will ; and this I will no longer postpone,
for I think that God is calling me.’ Looking at the
Queen, ‘ I ordain and constitute you my heiress/ he
proclaimed, * and I bequeath to your preacher, Magister
Gerhard, all my books. My clothes, and what else I
have, shall be for the poor; the rest I commend to
God. The Queen laughed a little and asked : * Monsieur
Jacques, what then shall remain to me as heritage ? ’
* The trouble,’ he replied, ^ of dividing all this amongst
the poor.’ * Well/ she said, ^ so be it, and I avow that
this shall be dearer to me than if my brother, the
King of France, had made me his heiress.’ At this the
holy man seemed happier, and saying : * I must rest
a little, dear lady Queen ; be meanwhile of good cheer,
and God be with you,’ he laid himself down on the
nearest bed, and, even while men thought that he
slept, departed. All wondered greatly when they
tried to awaken him, for none had taken heed of his
weakness. But the Queen caused him to be honour-
ably committed to earth, and his grave to be covered
with the tombstone that she had been fain to use for
herself.

The Palatine skies were soon again overcast, for
Frederick, who had been ailing for some time, now
grew steadily worse, owing not improbably to the
ministrations of the six royal physicians. These
learned gentlemen, prompted by their master, com-
manded a prolonged stay in Paris, and moved him
from his own narrow dwelling to ‘ the lovely squares
and gardens of Tournelles at the upper end of the city.’
It appears, indeed, that there were more reasons than
Hubertus’ tact permits him to reveal for the desire
of Francis to prolong his guests’ sojourn in Paris.
Another annalist, less discreet, throws a humorous

382 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

light on the subject, for, having first declared that the
great honour done to Frederick and Dorothea by
‘King Francisco’ would require a separate tractat, he
enlarges on the romantic circumstances of the visit,
and points out that not only had the Palsgrave been
once secretly affianced to his hostess, but that now
also the host was privily in love with the Palsgravine.

For the said King, he would have us to know, was
a marvellous ladies’ man (Jrawenman), having all his
life squandered great riches and infinite pains in such
businesses. And now he was set on winning, by
every manner of hidden practice, the heart of the
Princess and on ‘ rewarding her in like manner.’ But
his plans did not prosper. ‘ Albeit the Queen Leonora
was otherwise of no sharp wits or high intelligence,
yet could she well smell this rat, seeing that the
manifold furta of her husband the King had long been
known to her.’ So, with admirable precaution, she
took her little niece to herself, keeping her, the while
Frederick lay ill, of nights in her own chamber, and
letting her even by day but little from her side. By
these means all excursions from the right conjugal path
were delicately hindered, and the King, unrewarded
and unrewarding, must gaze from afar. ‘ And this
I have related for all men to know that such businesses
and practices flourish not only among the lowly but
even among the highest in the land.’ ^ The Count
Palatine, however, whether aware or not of these
amatory manoeuvres, had no intention of remaining in
Paris. Among his visitors was the English ambassador.
Bishop Bonner, bearing messages and letters of
invitation from Henry VIII. So soon, therefore, as
he could by any means rise from his bed, the party
prepared to set out.

The usual difficulties as to money now arose. For
the generosity of Francis did not extend so far as to
induce him to provide funds sufficient for a visit, of
which he by no means approved, to a rival power.

^ Zimmerische Chroniky iii.

THE DUCHESS OF MILAN 383

Eleonore, indeed, had presented the little Palsgravine
with another 2,000 crowns,’ but this was already spent.
‘ From this store,’ says Hubertus, ‘ she had been daily
buying all manner of things. And when I one day
friendlily reminded her how firm and fixed the prince
yet lay, and that we had nothing for our expenses in
Paris and during the rest of the journey other than
what the King gave us, she replied that I was to hold
my peace and say nothing further, for that she could
not rest until the last farthing had been spent.
Whereat I was fain to laugh and say : “ Surely your
Excellency is made just like unto my lord.’”*

All other hopes now hung upon Queen Mary,
Governess of the Netherlands, so, after a few more
days spent with Francis in the Constable’s Castle of
Chantilly, and in that new and ‘ most elegant palace,
Villa Cotorella,’ * they pushed on to Holland. Taking
ship at Dordrecht, they were nearing Rotterdam
when they beheld a little barge, full of people, coming
to meet them, and sorely beset by the strong south
wind. So great, indeed, seemed its danger, that the
Palatine party altered their sails and flew to the
rescue. To their great surprise, the occupant of
the boat proved to be the widowed Duchess of Milan,
the younger sister of the Palsgravine, who ‘out of
exceeding longing for her sister, had forced the boat-
men, with threats, despite the danger, to put out.’
Instead of a friendly welcome, she received, says
Hubertus, a severe rebuke. But it is not improbable

* In a letter to Bonner of August 14, Hubertiis says that *the
queen gave the princess dresses and a bed, worth 2,000 crowns.*
(Z. and P., Henry VI//., voL xiv. pt. ii.)

* The Zimmerische chronicler bears out this view of Dorc^hea’s
character, for, when mentioning later that, in her desire to have
children, she had made many pilgrimages and girded herself with
holy girdles, as her husband's mother had done before her, he reinarl 3
caustically that this took place with no such earnestness or devc^ion
as had been shown by the old Palsgravine, but with a ^gepieng imd
gespai.*

* The letter from Hubertus to Bonner is written from ‘Villa
Cotterrey* (Villers Cotterets). The palace was begun in 1532 by
Jacques and Guillaume Le Breton,

384 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

that the gallant little Duchess was more than able to
hold her own with so gentle-natured a tutor as her
brother-in-law, having already established a European
reputation for firmness and wit, by her answer to
Henry VIII.’s proposal of marriage : ‘ Had I but two
heads,’ she amiably declared, ‘ how gladly would I
place one at your Majesty’s disposal ! ’ ^

At the Hague the princely couple were hospitably
received by Queen Mary. But at once a difficulty
arose. For the Palsgrave, while firmly resolved both
to go to England and to have his expenses provided
for by his royal aunt, was perfectly aware that,
owing to recent diplomatic complications, she would
altogether disapprove of the enterprise. Indeed, that
Frederick himself should have chosen this moment to
visit the English King shows plainly the extremity of
need to which he had been driven. For he had been
closely involved — ‘seing he hath marryed thelder
suster’*— in the negotiations between Charles and
Henry concerning the young Duchess, and to be
plunged into the thick of the welcome preparing for
her substitute, Anne of Cleves, can scarcely have been
an alluring prospect. Moreover, to an adherent of
the Papacy, as Frederick still was, the proceedings
of the English monarch at this moment, when the dis-
solution of the monasteries was in full swing, must
have been far from agreeable.

To England, however, Frederick was determined to
go. So he invented the ingenious device of pro-
curing money from Queen Mary for his return to

^ The story does not seem to be quite borne out by the documents
of the time, though Wriothesley’s delightful account of his interview
with her is capable of various interpretations. ‘ She hard me wel/ he
concludes, ‘ and lyke oone (me thought) that was tickled/ She appears
to have been as attractive as the portrait of her by Holbein, now in
the National Gallery. ‘ She is marvelous wise,’ writes Wriothesley,
* very gentel, and as shamfast as ever I sawe soo wittye a woman. . . .
Very pure, faire of colour she is not, but a marvelous good brownishe
face she hathe, with faire redd lippes, and ruddy chekes. . . . She
was yet never soo wel paynted, but her lyvely visage doth muche excel
her poincture.’ {State Papers, Henry VII!,, voL viii. pt. v. cont.)

* See Illustrative Notes, 67.

TO ENGLAND 385

Germany, and of starting merely ‘ in the direction of
Antwerp.’ Having purchased in this city ail the
necessities of his further journey, he then hastily
made for Calais, hoping to cross the Channel without
delay.

But Queen Mary was not the only person to look
askance at the Palsgrave's unexpected vagary, and in
Calais Frederick and Hubertus — Dorothea had been
left with her deluded aunt — were detained for some
days by the Deputy, Lord Lisle,' nominally because of
‘ the disquietude of the sea, but in truth that he might
inquire of the King about us.’ It was not till a week
had passed that they were allowed to proceed, when,
in the company of Lord Lisle himself, they crossed on
quiet waters to England. Lauded be God, writes the
Deputy piously to his wife, for their fair and speedy
passage ; he himself had been ‘ nothing sick, whereof
I am not a little proud that I am now become so strong
a seaman.’

At Dover their welcome was a noisy one, for no
sooner had they reached the harbour than ‘such a
shooting ensued from the great pieces that stood above
on the hill, in the caves and holes, that the very sky
and sea seemed to be troubled, and that for the smoke
of it, through which we could see naught but flashes,
the whole island was blotted out.’ In former times,
adds Hubertus, Dover was merely an old castle with
a garrison, set to protect the ships which only here
found a possible landing. But now King Henry VI IL,
to guard England better,* had had great holes and

^ Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, natural son of Edward IV.
Hubertus wrongly describes him as ‘illegitimate brother of the king’s
father.’

* ‘ Our noble prynce,’ writes Boorde, ‘ hath, and dayly dothe make
noble defences, as castels, bulwarkes, and blokhouses, so that, almost,
his grace hath munited, and in maner wailed England rounde aboute,
for the saufegard of the realme, so that the poore subjectes may slepe
and wake in saufegard, doing their business with<Hit parturbaunce.’
He built them ‘ with no small sped, and like charge/ adds Harrison,
‘ whereby (no doubt) he did verie much qualifie the <^ceived grudges
of his adversaries, and vtterlie put off their hastie purpose of in-
vaaon-’

386 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

caves hewn in the rocks, and filled with soldiers.
Many other neighbouring places had also been
fortified by him, which all at a time discharged a
mighty shooting. ‘ The Duke and I came aland to-
gether,’ supplements Lord Lisle, ‘yet was I landed
before him, where he was received with 6o great
shot of artillery.’ Sir Christopher Morice, Master of
the Ordnance, with the mayor and other gentlemen,
attended Frederick’s coming on the shore, and the
King had sent ‘ a horse-litter and two muletts covered
with crimson velvet ’ to convey him to his lodging.^

In other respects, however, the Palsgrave’s re-
ception in England seems to have been by no means
brilliant, for (if the French ambassador is to be
believed) the body of gentlemen who were originally
told off to accompany him had been countermanded
by Henry, and the guest was left to pursue his un-
welcome way to London with no escort other than
that of Lord Lisle, who was travelling for his own
purposes. Even at the appointed lodging in the
capital there was none but his host — a rich merchant
— to receive him.

A considerable ring of disturbance had, in fact, been
caused by the dropping of this Catholic pebble into
the newly calmed pool of the Cleves alliance, and
England and her neighbours alike showed marked
signs of agitation. The letters of the day bubble with
curiosity and alarm. No sooner had the Duke of
Cleves heard the disquieting news, writes one cor-
respondent, than he instantly despatched three extra
envoys to Henry’s Court; and Francis I. writes
urgently to his ambassador, Marillac, to find out all
that he can concerning the visitor and his intentions.*

^ For all letters referred to in this chapter, unless otherwise stated,
see Z*. and P , Henry VUL, voL xiv. pt. ii.

* Even Pope Paul III. was agitated: ‘The Pope asked for an
opinion about the Count Palatine^s journey into England, of which
he was very suspicious. . . , said he suspected some alliance of the
Emperor with the King/ (Grignan, French Ambassador in Rome,
to Frauds I., Oct. 21.)

DOUBTS 387

Marillac himself reports to the Constable de Mont-
morency that he is hastening to London to see ‘ what
welcome they will make Duke Frederick,’ promising
to keep as near to the Court as possible, and to probe
the business to the uttermost. Three reasons, he
adds, were popularly assigned for the unexpected
descent of the German prince ; ‘ Some of the nearest
servants of this King dare to say he brings a secret
commission from the Emperor to make a conspiracy
here, and get money if he can ; others, that he will
demand aid against the King of Denmark, which
kingdom he claims in right of his wife ^ ; but the
common opinion is that he comes to resume the long
protracted discussion of the marriage of the Duchess
of Milan.’

As for the English monarch, he professed total
ignorance of his visitor’s intentions and desires.
‘The King himself,’ continues Marillac in another
curious passage, ‘ said he did not know the motive of
his coming, unless it were for old acquaintance’ sake,
adding that if the said Duke spoke of what was
formerly in question he knew what to answer ; and
that he was not to be put to sleep by fine promises, of
which there is such a market that every one may be
rich and poor — ^rich in hope and poor in effect — and
would to God the King, his brother (Francis), knew it
as well as he.’ No sooner, too, had Frederick arrived
in London than Henry commanded Cromwell to visit
him quickly, and ‘ feel whether you can grope out of
him wherefore he is come.’ * In brief, the diplomatic
dovecots were considerably fluttered, and it seems not
unlikely that the messages and invitation delivered to
Frederick in Paris had been merely the offspring of
Bishop Bonner’s anti-Protestant zeal.

None the less, both the journey and the sojourn in

^ The Danish cvQvm had been offered in 1534 to Henry himself by
the Protestant demagogues of Lubeck, and the treaty of mutual
support was actually drawn up when Christian of Holstein, also
a Protestant, was proclaimed king. Cf. Politiad Hhiory^ vol. v.

* Letter of Lord Southampton and others to Crcanwell, Sept. 16.

388 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

London were cheerful enough. ‘The Palsgrave and
I are merry here in Canterbury,' writes the Deputy to
his lady : ‘ send me the furs of my tawny velvet gown
and the sables; for, from what I have heard, they
may be needed. The Palsgrave desires his com-
mendations. He left behind him the little flagon with
the walnut water. Send it with the furs.’ And John
Hussey, the Lisles’ servant, delivers to his mistress
an account of further merriment and ‘ high feasting ’
in the capital. Hubertus, of course, makes the best of
the matter. His master was received, he declares, by
several distinguished lords of the King’s sending,
while the rich citizen, who lodged the party, ‘ enter-
tained us most richly, not allowing our harbingers to
expend the smallest amount. Did he learn that one
of them had paid for aught, he made it good to him
forthwith, saying that the King had forbidden him,
under pain of instant beheading, to take one farthing
from us.’

While awaiting his summons to the royal presence,
Frederick was, as usual, taken to see all the sights of
the city, being especially shown the Tower of London
and its ‘incredibly great’ contents. And in this the
favourable intentions of Henry appear, for, as Marillac
explains to Montmorency, this is what they are
accustomed to do ‘ to foreign gentlemen whom they
wish to caress.’ ^ Westminster was, unhappily, a
source of great disappointment to the Palsgrave, for
although he was privileged to gaze upon the tombs
and images of many kings, he was denied the sight of
the world-famous antlers of eight-and-twenty points,
said to have been preserved in this minster, ‘ the story
whereof goes that the Frankish king, Dagobert, took
them from a stag which he caught while hunting in
the forest near Senlis, having round its neck a golden
band with this inscription : “ Julius Caesar let me go

^ In Henry’s instructions to Cromwell concerning the Palatine, he
commands the Tower and ordnance to be shown, ‘if you think it
advisable/ (Letter of Lord Southampton, etc,)

IN LONDON 389

free.’”* The iconoclastic Henry had just caused the
horns to be removed from the vaults of the church,
fearing that the monks, whom he was about to dis-
possess, might carry them off. Frederick’s desire had
therefore to go unsatisfied, although he had such a
longing to see the marvels that he said he had come
to England chiefly for their sake. The Germans also
visited in an old church the tombs of the old Saxons,
who in bygone times conquered the island and called
it England in the stead of Britain,* and they were
' astounded at the many noble palaces, wherein shone
hangings of gold and of silver.’

Meanwhile, the Palsgrave’s quest had remained
sealed to the hardiest inquisitors. On the day after
his arrival Frederick had been fetched from his
lodging ‘ with a very fine troop of horse ’ to the house
of the Lord Privy Seal and there generously feasted,
the aim of the hospitality being, as Marillac writes and
Henry’s orders confirm, that Cromwell should * feel
what he could of the Duke’s intention, in order to
inform the King and to give him time to prepare an
answer.’ The ambassadors of Francis and of Charles
had also visited the traveller in the hope of obtaining
information. But all had been in vain. The secret
was to be confided to Henry’s ears alone. Even
Cromwell, although ‘ he has principal management of
all the affairs of this realm,’ was not to be enlightened.

^ This legend is usually attributed even more impossibly to
Charles VI. of France : ‘ Et fut trouv6 un cerf qui avoit au col une
chaisne de cuivre dor^, et defendit qu’on ne le prit que au las, sans
le tuer, et ainsi fut fait, Et trouva on qu’il avoit au cou ladite chaisne,
ou avoit escrit; C^^sar hoc miki danan/it} (Juvenal des Ursins-)
Sir Thomas Browne does not allude to either of these versimis, though
he mentions Piin/s anecdote of * a deer with a collar about his nedk,
put on by Alexander the Great and taken alive an hundred years after*
as being suggestive of ‘ imposture or mistake.*

* Probably the Knights Templars in the Temple Church, whom
Hentzner also mistook for ‘the kings of Denmark that reigned in
England.’ ‘There remaineth monuments of noblemen buried, to the
number of eleven, eight of them are images of armed knights, five
lying cross-legged, as men vowed to the Holy Land, against the
infidels and unbelieving Jews ; the other three straight-l^ged ; the
rest are coped stones aB of gray marble.* (Stow.)

390 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

And the King had perforce to face his visitor un-
prepared.

Henry’s first idea was to give an audience to the
Palsgrave at ‘ the More ’ (Moor Park) : ‘ a goodly house
and a place fit to receive the Count Palatine.’ Windsor,
however, was finally selected for the reception, and
thither the Palsgrave was bidden. He set forth gladly,
passing, notes Hubertus, by ‘ the beautiful castle of
Richmond ’ ; but at another ‘ castle belonging to a
noble’ he found himself again detained. At this he
was highly indignant, and only consented to be
pacified on being informed that the delay arose solely
from Henry’s desire to collect his nobility, and thus to
furnish a more splendid welcome to his visitors ; for
together with Frederick were to be received the
ambassadors of the Duke of Cleves, to settle definitely
the delicate question of the new bride, ‘ whom the said
King, so soon as he had taken her, thrust once more
away.’ These envoys, in fact, had been asked whether
they preferred to arrive with the Palsgrave or to wait
till his audience with the sovereign was at an end.
And, moved presumably by the prevalent fear of
German intrigue, they had hastily decided to present
themselves at the first possible moment.

When the great day at length arrived, the Germans
were met, some two or three miles from Windsor,
by the Duke of Suffolk and a hundred horsemen clad
in velvet,^ who escorted them to their destination : ‘ up
a hill through a town to an old Castle, which lay near
to the spot where Julius Caesar found a ford through
the Thames and defeated the army of Cassivelaunus,’
writes the annalist, brimming as ever with information.
They were lodged at the Dean’s House,® especially
hung for the occasion ‘ with the King’s stuff,’ while
the Comptroller had particular orders to see them fur-
nished with viands and drink at the King’s charge.
Everything, says Hubertus, was ‘ most royally ordered.’

* ‘The Duke of Suffolk received him beyond Eton Bridge with a
goodly band of men.’

FEASTING AT WINDSOR 391

On the following day (September 24) they were
invited to a banquet at the Castle, the Palsgrave being
placed opposite to the King, and next to the Cleves
ambassador. And here, at least, Frederick suffered no
neglect. ‘ It is hardly to be believed how splendidly
all was set forth, and what manifold meats and courses
in golden dishes were served. Not only the walls
but also the floor of the hall was covered with carpets
of worked gold ; ^ and there was to be heard a noble
music of all manner of instruments.’* Moreover, when
the meal was at an end, Henry conversed with his
German guest for nearly two hours alone, though of
this conversation Hubertus unfortunately records but
little. They spoke, he briefly tells, of Frederick’s
journeys in Spain, France and England. We may
suppose, however, that Henry at length plumbed his
visitor’s hopes and desires, and was convinced of the
innocuousness — at least towards himself and his in-
tended bride — of that visitor's intentions.

For, according to Hubertus, Frederick was now
treated with every symptom of honour. Not only
was he escorted back to his lodging by Henry’s own
brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, and a band of
distinguished peers, but every day ‘ the most ex-
cellent English lords’ came to eat with him and
take him to the chase; while one of those great
hunting-parties that Henry so dearly loved was
arranged for his special delectation. First, ‘ in a
lovely meadow ’ near the river and not far from the

^ * Les Anglois se servant fort des tappisseries, des toiles pinctes qn
sent bien feictes, auxquelles y a force & magnifiques roses, coumn-
nees on il y a fleurs de Liz & Lions, car en pen de maisons vons
pouvres entrer que vous ne trouvies cest tappisseries.* (Periin.)

* At Windsor, wrote the Duke of Wurtember^, *tbe music,
especially the organ, was exquisitely played ; for at tunes you could
hear the sound of comets, flutes, then fifes and other instruments ;
and there was likewise a little boy who sang so sweetly amongst it ah,
and threw such a charm over the music with his little tongue, that it
was really wonderful to listen to him.’ Henry VIIL* says Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, was * a curious musician, as two entire masses
composed by him and often sung in his Chapel, did abundantly
witness,*

392 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

Castle, a great arbour^ of green leaves and laurel
boughs— ‘whereof there are many in England’— was
quickly built, and in this another stately banquet was
given to the Palsgrave. Scarcely was it at an end
when the huntsmen were heard blowing their horns
in the nearer groves of the Great Park, and the deer
could be seen pursued by the hounds, running hither
and thither. ‘ Then would no one stay at table, but
all rose up to look on at the hunt.’ Dotted all about
were various lords, who themselves acted as verderers
and held the great buckhounds in leash. Some were
posted near the Thames, that the quarry might not
plunge into the water, some near the thickets that it
should not gain shelter ; ‘ and only on a narrow way
resembling a bird-cage were the animals one by one
allowed to pass, and each for the amusement of the
company must run the whole length of the meadow, if
it would not be pulled down by the hounds.’ At the
end of this lane of death the poor brute was caught in
the toils,or fell into the hands of the net-keepers, or was
laid low by the great dogs. The hunt lasted over three
hours, and thirty-four stags were taken, which were all
spread out before the arbour, and then given by the
King, part to the Palsgrave, and part to the ambassadors.

It must be admitted that Marillac gives a very
different account of the treatment meted out at Windsor
to Frederick. For, in a letter to Francis, of October 3,
he tells with gusto of the ‘ great caresses made to the
(Cleves) ambassadors and the little accoimt taken of
the Count Palatine since his first interview : he has
remained alone in his lodging while they have been
feasted every day.’ But the Frenchman is throughout
determined to read the most nefarious schemes into
the German prince’s harmless, if hare-brained, ex-
pedition, and is obviously on the look-out for what he
considers to be their checkmating. Even should his

* An arbour green with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with leaves beset . . .

The Kin^s Q^tccdr,

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL 393

facts not be exaggerated, it is not very surprising
that the heralds of the coming bride should be pre-
ferred in honour before a mere passing guest. In any
case, Frederick seems to have remained at Windsor
for nearly a week — a lengthy stay, which argues some
friendliness on the part of Henry
The net result of the negotiations cannot, however, be
said to amount to much. ‘ The Count Palatine came
only for aid against Denmark, and returns disap-
pointed,’ writes Marillac at last blithely ; and for once
he is correct, since a gift of 6,000 crowns — a goodly
sum, but no enduring one for so generous a spender
— was all that Frederick obtained to reward him for
his pains.* The annalist also has a private grief ;
for although he was shown countless silver drinking-
goblets and vessels, he was given only one, and
that for his wife : * and the Prince was of opinion
that Grunvallus (Cromwell) had kept them, since he
loved gold and silver above measure.’ Cromwell,
indeed, was already no longer relying on the brilliant
favour that he had enjoyed with the King, but went
about secretly with the thought that he would escape
from the country : ‘ and would, I believe, have
discovered himself to me, had it been so ordained.’
He sent many times for Hubertus during the sojourn
in London, and led him by the hand ‘ now in gardens,
and now in galleries,’ going for the most part in deep
thought, uttering broken words, and standing from
time to time still, ‘even as though he would say
somewhat and could not.’ Once he asked whether the
Prince did not possess any castles or domains which
he would like to sell or lease, and he begged the
secretary urgently to come again to England at

^ In the original instructions to Cromwell there had been an
ominous sentence, suggesting that if the visitor’s charge were ci no
great weight or declared things not to the king’s pleasure, he should
be sent away after two days,

* According to Lord Lisle the sum was far less : ‘ The Palsgrave
has received 2,000 marks for his reward, no ill journey for him/ he
writes to Lady Lisfe on Oct 6 ,

394 the adventures of a palsgrave

Christmas, saying that it should be to his lord’s and his
own great advantage. Finally, Cromwell presented a
silver cup for the wife of Hubertus, whereby she should
know him, if ever he came to Germany : ‘ but in reality
matters went otherwise with him, for, not long after
our departure, he was put into prison and executed.’

The most pleasant gifts that reached the Palsgrave
while in England were certainly those sent after him
by his hostess at Calais, Lady Lisle, who not only
pampered him with such dainties as ‘ a partridge pasty
and a baked crane,’ but even deprived herself for his
benefit of the trusted friend of years. ‘ I send you,’
she writes to the Deputy, ‘ my tooth-picker, which I
thought to have given to the Palsgrave while he was
here, but it was not then at my hand. Please present
it him. I send it to him because when he was here I
did not see him wear a pen or call (quill ?), to pick his
teeth with. Tell him I have had it seven years.’ ^
This charming lady seems, indeed, to have felt a kind-
ness for Frederick. ‘ I am glad that the Palsgrave is
merry,' she writes more than once, and he in return
sends messages of affection to her under the pla3rful
appellation of ‘sa bonne m^re.’* It is to be hoped
that her amiable hospitality on his second passage
through Calais may have cheered the grey and dis-
illusioned hours of his homeward path.

For there was now no further excuse for delay, and
Frederick and his company could do no otherwise
than withdraw ignominiously to their neglected Pala-
tinate. After a brief sojourn at Hampton Court and

^ ‘ Tooth-pickers ’ were sometimes put to curious uses : * Quand vous
me verrez,* says Jehan^s ‘ Dame par amours’ to her lover, ‘ que d’une
espmgle je purgeray mes dens, ce sera signe que je vouldray parler k
vous,’ {Iftst dufetit Jehan Sainctri^ Antoine de la Sale.)

* ‘I send you two pieces of wine, the one white and the other
claret, of the best growth of this country. Although the season has
been indifferent, I think, from what I hear from France, that you will
find it passable and drink it with madame, my good mother, in re-
membrance of your son. Having joined my brother, the Elector,
here, my men have sent to my house, without my knowledge, the
rapier I promised you ; but I will send it to you as soon as I arrive.
(Count Fajatine to Lord Lisle^ from Heidelberjc, November ^o, 1539.)

THE JOURNEY’S END 39S

in London * they re-crossed the Channel in the company
of Lord Lisle, and set out sadly through Brabant.*
Nor, save in experience and the possession of a new
and bone-bare kitchen, were they in any way the better
for their trip. ‘Blood-poor’ they had set out, and
‘ blood-poor’ they came back. The retinue, indeed,
had clothed themselves in silks and fine array after the
newest English fashion,* ‘ guarded with velvet a hand
broad ’ ; and Hubertus alone — to his master’s great
displeasure, be it said — was still clad in the Spanish
mourning dress, old and torn, that all, ‘even the
shepherd-boys,’ had been forced to wear on the death
of the Empress Isabella. But the foreign fineries had
eaten up all and more of the foreign subsidies that had
been the object of the journey, while the treasury at
home had been riotously squandered by unfaithful
stewards. As for those courtiers who had drifted
homewards during the course of the journey, they had
all returned laden with ‘ costly outlandish ■wares,’
wherewith they had decked their wives and children.
‘You cannot imagine,’ lamented Hartmannus to
Hubertus when they met, ‘ the things that have been
sent both by water and by land. When you reach
home, you shall learn it yourself from the women.’

Yet, if Frederick’s own Rhenish castles were mort-
gaged to their topmost turret, he could still, as ever,
build marvellous castles in Spain — and in Denmark.
The Danish succession, once established, would
assuredly help him out of all his difficulties. And he
passed boyish inconsequent days in the chasing of the
most butterfly hopes and dreams. Of the vanity and
vanishing of these hopes, with the weariness of
fruitless wars and embassies that they entailed, here
is no place to speak. Born of a momentary Imperial
need, they died of the permanent Imperial necessity.
Enough to say that Denmark remained as elusive as

* ‘The Palsgrave and he are at Hampton Court and will be to-
morrow at York Place/ writes Hissey to Lady Lisle on Sept. 30.

* See Illustrative Notes, * Jidd,^ 69,

396 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

ever and Charles as unforthcoming. And when, to
Frederick’s already over-flowing embarrassments there
were added the succession to the Electorship, a change
of religion, and the intricate, long-drawn complications
of the Schmalkaldic War, it appeared that the forebod-
ings of Hubertus had been only too reasonably founded.

Here, however, the tale of his wanderings becomes
merged in a tragic drama of religious warfare, and
these later moods of the ‘ mighty potentates ’ must be
left to their proper chronicler. Two mottoes had been
Frederick’s in his youth, and in his age he did not
repudiate them : ‘ Whoso would eat the kernel of the
nut must first open the shell,’ and ‘ In running a race,
one may not turn half-way.’ To the Palsgrave, indeed,
more than to the most of his contemporaries, had the
shell of the civilized world been opened. And if he
found the kernel bitter, it was perhaps but the fault of
an over-sanguine and over-sensitive palate. As to the
race that he ran, when once the course was clear to
him he never flagged nor faltered. ‘ He dearly loved
the House of Austria,’ writes the chronicler, and sorely
as her princes tried his patience and his pride, death
discovered him as loyal as on the day when he first
entered their service. It is true that after his accession
to the Electorate, he joined for awhile the ranks of
the Emperor’s enemies. Yet he seems ever to have
been driven by motives of national policy alone,
arising from the Lutheranism of his Palatine subjects
and the troubled condition of the German states. He
maintained to the end his personal devotion to Charles
and to Ferdinand ; a kind word from the Emperor
brought tears to his eyes ; while the last decade of his
seventy long years was spent in vain efforts for the
preservation of internal peace. ^

And thus was the promise of his name fulfilled.

* Sleidanus reports that in 1546 the Elector Palatine Frederick
‘endeavours_ a Reconciliation amongst all sides’; though ‘the Cormten-
wce of Ai&irs looked very sad and dismal, yet it was his opinion, that
if they would submit to the Emperour and comply with him in some
thirds, it would be a very fair way towards an Accommodation.’

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

INTRODUCTORY

The Memoirs of the Silesian courtier, Hans von
Schweinichen, are among the most delightful of
German chronicles ; but their welcome, though de-
cidedly warmer than that of their predecessors, has
scarcely equalled their merit. Although first — and
very incorrectly — published by BQsching nearly a
hundred years ago under the title of Lkben, Lust und
Leben der Deutschen des Seckssehnten Jahrhunderts,
there has been only one complete edition since that
time, and this is itself some thirty years old.

And yet these Memoirs are a treasury of amusement
and information to all who are interested in the
manners and morals of the forefathers of modem
Europe. Indeed, in pictorial candour they approach
more nearly to the autobiography of Cellini or the
diary of Pepys than do any other contemporary
writings of their own or any other country. From
year to year, throughout the later sixteenth century,
they present with ingenuous zest and meticulous
carefulness, the hopes and happenings of eveiy
day. And from year to year they record, with
disarming frankness, the reflections of the compiler
thereupon. Nothing is invented, but nothing is
omitted, and the most homely details, even to the
yearly variations in the price of com, or the amount

397

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

398

paid for a new fustian doublet, or the tale of
fieldfares devoured at a neighbour’s wedding, are
transcribed with munificent minuteness. Nor is this
all : for the variegated adventures of Hans’s career at
the Court of the merry Lords of Liegnitz (and from first
to last he served under six of them) are put before us
with a power of observation and of racy narrative that
are rarely to be met with; while his delineation of
Heinrich XL, the Falstaff of Silesia, is worthy to
adorn any stage.

Moreover, Schweinichen paints himself, though with
unconscious art, into the picture, and the portrait
which results is a singularly charming one. He seems,
indeed, to have been something of an exception for his
brutal day and surroundings — the rose in the garden
of Attalus, the ‘wholesome flower in a venomous
plantation.’ For he is a genial .personage : honest
(according to his rather curious lights) though among
thieves, careful though among spendthrifts, outspoken
though dwelling with princes and hypocrites, clean-
living and loving though in a world of rakes ; and yet,
with it all, a ‘ Weltkind’ of keen passions and multi-
tudinous temptations. Of a simple, busy, loveable
nature, he shows himself as a very Martha among
knights ; so cheerful and healthy to boot, that although,
to use his own words, ‘joy was dear and grief was
cheap ’ in those days, yet long depression is unknown
to him, and gaiety and gladness of heart are his
unfailing companions. The rudest buffets of fortune
leave him facing the world; with an unconquerable
grumble, it is true,but also with an unconquerable smile.

‘ Verily,’ he exclaims, after one of the many journeys
of ignominy and debt to which his master’s service
condemned him, ‘in this travelling I encountered so
many and rare jests that to tell them were impossible.’
And again : ‘ On this journey it was to me as though I
was in Paradise, for daily and hourly was joy forth-
coming, nor knew I of any sorrow.’ Even when the
heavy clouds of Imperial anger were thundering about

INTRODUCTORY

399

his small horizon, 'none the less was I joyful,’ he
needlessly but charmingly assures us, ' let not a bitter
wind blow round me, but trusted God and loved my
Maurauschlein,^ and left nothing undone in my master's
service.’ Where shall we find a simpler or a braver
programme of daily life ?

It must be admitted that, as a young man, he was,
like many another in that age of topers, ‘ strong in his
drink ’ and merry in his cups. Wherever he went, he
tells, he took a leading part in what was undoubtedly
the leading feature of every entertainment, tossing his
can with the best of them for the space of whole nights
and days, and proving himself the ‘ hardiest soaker ’ of
them all. ‘Yet never,’ he adds defensively, ‘was I
foul-lived as was then the custom, but behaved myself
well towards every one, so that I can say with
certainty that no company bore me any ill-will.’ Nor,
in truth, can this have been an easy achievement at a
time when an almost incredible coarseness was con-
sidered to be the correct fashion for polite manhood.

* There were this year in the district,’ he records on
one occasion, ‘a company of foul-livers, whom men
called “ the Twenty-seven,” who had sworn, whitherso-
ever they went, to be filthy : item, none should pray,
and none should wash, with other like blasphemies.’
Of these men, four or five at a time would be con-
stantly staying in the Schweinichen mansion, and it
reflects no small credit upon Hans, who had to serve
them both in their sports and in their carousings,
that he escaped contamination — ^sufficiently at least to
remain well pleased with himself.

Again, Hans stands confessed a liberal wooer of
women. Countless are the maidens whom ‘ I loved so
dearly that I could not sleep,’ and from whom he parted
‘ with wet eyes ’ on both sides. Many times, indeed, he
was near to marriage, but ever checked himself in
time, ingenuously attributing his salvation to an all-
seeing Providence. ‘ But God is almighty,’ he wrote

* ‘ A fond tenn, as who should say “ my Uttle bat” ’ (Old Diet.)

400 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

on one occasion, when deciding that flight was the
wiser plan; ‘what He does not order and dispose
comes not to pass. So this time also my wife-taking
fell through.’ Yet his courtings, like his carousings,
were of a fleeting and innocent character, and were in
the end more than redeemed by his high and whole-
hearted devotion to that little ‘ Maurauschlein,’ quaint
in green, who strays with so sweet and wistful a grace
across the pages of his life.

Schweinichen’s piety, too, was simple and genuine,
and on notable occasions, as at the junction of the
years, his thoughts of life and death are touched with
a real emotion, and even beauty. On all sides, he con-
stantly declares, he beheld ‘ the strength and the might
and the wonder of God,’ and in the daily orison
which he records for us at painstaking length, ‘ Drive
out,’ he finely prays, ‘ the darkness of my heart by the
light of Thy Spirit, and burn up my coldness with its
flame.’ The diary is prefaced by a long and detailed
‘Confession of my faith and belief,’ modelled on the
strictest Lutheran examples.

His religious devotion does not, however, prevent
him from being soundly superstitious, with a faith in
apparitions and in magical foreknowledge, rivalling
that of Schaschek and Tetzel. He teUs with zest and
awe of marvels such as the snowing and raining of
blood,^ ‘ that folks’ clothes were all covered there-
with ’ ; and he had an implicit belief in his horoscope
that doubtless helped largely towards its fulfilment.
He was, moreover, visited by frequent ghosts. As a
boy, quarrelling with his comrades, he was recalled to
the paths of virtue by the grunts of a phantom sow :
‘ what sort of a sow this was can readily be imagined,
for there was no such thing in the castle; but God
preserved us both.’ As a lad, lost with his master on

* This ‘ blood-r^,’ so often alluded to by old writers, seems to have
been a sort of scarlet fungus or mould, which would suddenly appear on
garments or on the roofs of houses, and almost invariably heralded an
epidemic Ct Hecker.

INTRODUCTORY 401

a snow-covered heath, he was rescued from certain
death by a mysterious figure, speaking many tongues,
who refused all recompense : ‘ and whither he went
when he had set us right no one knew, but I verily
believe that he was a good angel.’ At Emmerich his
very serviceable ‘ spirit or prodigy ’ tidied the rooms,
brushed the flies from his face, and so sat in a corner
and laughed at him. And in later years, when helpless
with gout and crying for succour in the night, ‘ a tall
wench with a juglet of water ’ appeared through the
locked door, and ministered to his needs. Again, at a
certain wedding, ‘during the procession, there was
seen to dance round the battlement of the tower the
ghost named Loretta, which not uncommonly appeared
in the house of Krummenau. She was not looked
upon as a good sign,’ yet might add, one would hope,
a touch of poetry to an entertainment otherwise
weighted, in good German fashion, by 40,837 eggs and
over 6,000 ‘ viertels ’ of beer.

Another characteristic of Hans forms an amiable link
between him and his greater English brother-in-
letters; to wit, his love for personal adornment, and
the pride with which he describes both his own attire
and that of those belonging to him. And this pro-
pensity has its value. For thereby we are able to
picture him in almost every phase of his life : in the
fustian and frieze — in which * I thought myself not
the ugliest ’ — of his boyhood ; in the slashed and
parti-coloured livery — one leg black and one yellow —
of his service as page; in the red damask ‘after the
Italian fashion ’ of his equerryship, in which he knew
himself to be so ‘ all-beautiful ’ that God would have
been wrong to permit him such splendour unalloyed ;
in the more dignified ‘ black velvet suit with golden
roses’ and sober-coloured mantle of his later court
life ; and, above all, in the ‘ green of a silken satin,’
adorned with silver braidings and a rose-red coat,
of his wedding day. Moreover, and again like Pepys,
he joined to this sense of the importance of fine clothes

402 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

a prudent attention to the cost. ‘ And I had to pay
more than 250 thalers,’ ^ he writes of this last extrava-
gance ; while, in the eventful year that includes the
death of his first wife and the espousing of his second,
he laments, almost with tears, the expenses of his
wardrobe. ' For to array myself and my belongings in
mourning cost me much, as also thereafter in garments
for the wedding was much expended, besides all that
which I gave the damsel, the which items may well
have run to i,roo thalers. Wherefore,’ he concludes,
with pleasant trust in the justice and generosity of
Providence, ‘ I surely expect from God a rich restitu-
tion : even as He did wonderfully endow me for the
outlay, so also will He presently, with His rich mild
hand, restore it to me again.’ And, indeed, many of
these items were so charming and so obviously
necessary to a great occasion that it would be but a
stony heart that would deny them to him. Thus,
to ‘satin for the lady’s wedding-gown,’ 38 thalers;
to ‘golden borders’ for the same, ten thalers; to
‘ a garland with a golden stem, each carnation-
stalk being gilded,’ nine thalers ; to the carnations
for the garland, two thalers ; to feathers for the same,
one thaler; to a pair of green velvet slippers, four
thalers; to her gloves, one thaler; to the wedding-
ring, 45 thalers ; to a ‘ little worked heartlet of gold,’
five thalers; to a ring with an elk’s hoof,® three

* The value of early German ccAns is a much debated subject.
But according to Fynes Morison, the Reichs Thaler or dollar Ms
worth foure shillings foure pence English/ and the silver Gulden or
dorin * three shillings foure pence ’ j the Gold Gulden ‘ is almost of
the same standard with the Crowne Gold of England ’ ; and twenty
Weissgroschen (equiv^ents of the English groat or silver penny)

‘ make a Reichs D oiler.* {Itinerary). The name Thaler was short
for Joachimsthaler^ the coins being originally made from silver found
in the Joachimsthal in Bohemia. Its old English rendering of
dollar has been too much spoiled by modern usage to be employed.

* Elk*s hoof was highly prized for its supposed curative properties.

* I beg you/ writes a lady to Albrecht of Brandenburg, ‘ to remember
ine_ with a bit of white amber and elk hoof in a little paternoster or
a ring.* To be really efficacious it must be taken from the animal
between two festivals of the Virgin. ‘Elk*s hoofs and horns are
m^Enified for epilepsies,* said Sir Thomas Browne ; and even in the

INTRODUCTORY

403

thalers ; to rings with a turquoise and a rose-ruby,
19 thalers; to a muscatelle, two thalers; finally, and
most diplomatically, to a looking-glass for to see
herself, one thaler, and to the Morgen-gabe of a golden
chain, 80 Hungarian florins. What could be more
pleasant or more seemly ?

It must be added that on his master’s behalf — always
supposing that master to be in some degree solvent —
Hans would spend with unreflecting lavishness. For
instance, at the marriage of Duke Friedrich of Liegnitz,
he provided for the garnishing of the bridegroom
more than 6,000 thalers’ worth of velvet and silk, with
an even larger supply for the adornment of the bride ;
while the actual wedding garment was so nobly em-
broidered with gold and silver that by itself it cost the
Duke fully a quarter of this sum. Court ceremonies
were, in fact, Schweinichen’s speciality. ‘The Almighty,
by peculiar dispensation, has provided His Princely
Grace with a brave fine honourable discreet gentleman,
well versed and experienced in the ways and manners
of courts ’ ; so ran Captain Samson Stange’s welcoming
speech on the occasion of the knight’s installation as
Marshal to this same Friedrich. In his later years
Hans even kept a careful and voluminous note-book
of the procedure to be used at all the august page-
antries of life and death.^ Funerals were perhaps his
dearest passion, and he speaks of them with something
of the paternal pride of an inventor. ‘ It was an
elegant royal burying,’ he writes of the disposal of one
of his many masters, ‘ as the ceremonial, which I wrote
out all myself, shows.’

Yet one more Pepys-like quality is to be noticed,
and this is the childish exultation with which he
declares the magnificence and rank of his acquaintance,

eighteeath century the popular poudre de M. Daquin contained
ounces of elk’s hoof and unicorn’s horn in strange proximity with
ounces of ‘the root of a male peony gathered at the wane of the
moon,’ and of ‘the rakings of the skull of a man dead of a violent
death.’ Cf. the PJuxrmacopie of Nicolas Lemery.

* See Wutke, Merkbuck des Ritters Ham von Schweinicken.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

404

and the excellence of his own powers of entertain-
ment. ‘God gave me notable friends, with whom I
stood well,’ he boasts more than once, and the eight
tables of nobility that graced his second marriage feast
gave him prolonged and unstinted satisfaction. His
generosity to his kinsfolk and poorer neighbours was
however equally remarkable ; and nothing is more
characteristic of his kindly heart than the will, com-
posed at the age of sixty-four, in which, besides many
legacies to his kinsmen, he bequeaths an annual
income of 200 thalers to his impoverished people at
MertschQtz, 600 for clothing the poor scholars of
Liegnitz, 50 ‘to swell the otherwise scanty pay’ of
the school-teachers, and finally — with, we may suppose,
a twinkling eye upon the past — 10 thalers to the
priesthood of the ‘ General-Konvent ’ to drink to his
memory in good Hungarian wine.

It would not, indeed, be difficult to discover faults
in these chronicles ; for Hans’s horizon is but a close
one, outlined and bounded by the encircling walls of
his narrow personal experience. Not to him must we
look for luminous exposition of the politics and
policies of the time, nor are his the eyes through
which we shall gain fresh glimpses of the art and
literature and science of that century of curious con-
trasts and combinations. The Huguenot wars and
the terrible struggle between Alva and Orange are
alike but dimly alluded to as a background for the
princely debts and diversions. And, despite his con-
stant visits to Prague, no hint is given of the marvels
of Rudolfs Bohemian Castle, then in the period of its
prime, with its galleries of arts and antiquities, its
gardens of rare herbs and strange beasts ; with, above
all, its astronomers and its alchemists, its Tycho Brahe
and its Kepler, its Kelley and its Dr. Dee. Hans’s
style, again, is simple to the verge of baldness, as
regardless often of grammar as of ornament, and
almost invariably oblivious of the nominative case.
But he is so eagerly interested in his story, and so

INTRODUCTORY 405

briskly determined that his readers should realise all
the splendours and the squalors, the honours and the
griefs, which in turn befell both his masters and him-
self, that he would easily win forgiveness for even a
less skilful pen.

And, after all, the chief matter for us is that Hans
was born, and born in a station sufficiently exalted to
admit him to daily and intimate intercourse with the
strange princely beings who governed Lower Silesia
in the unrestful years that followed the Reformation
and the death of Charles V. For, verily, the Ducal
Court of Liegnitz was at this time the home of a
curious race. In the deed confirming the Heritage
covenant between Joachim II. of Brandenburg and
Friedrich II. of Liegnitz, the rights of the respective
‘ Heritage-brothers ’ are thus declared : ‘ They can, as
they see wisest, give away, sell, pawn, dispose of and
exchange {vergeben, verkaufen, versetzen, verschaffen,
verwechsdn) these said lands ’ — to all lengths and
with all manner of freedom.^ And, though this com-
pact was later annulled and the actual landscape
became once more inalienable, the said five words may
be held as briefly but pregnantly describing the active
life in the sixteenth century of these sovereign princes.
For their main — their lonely — conception of life was
to spend. Sprung of the wild old Piasts of Poland,
and alien in trend and temper to a people of ever-
increasing Germanic and industrial tendencies, they
present a striking and almost tragic spectacle of
prodigal penury and ineffective effort. Their divinest
despairs, their highest heavenly hopes, were all of
gold : of money to be lent and of money to be spent.
The whole breadth of the Empire might be moving un-
easily; but what cared they, provided funds were
obtainable? The faiths of generations might be
bandied like shuttlecocks from Emperor to reformer
and from prince to Pope : no matter to them, if cash
were but forthcoming. Through the first fierce
^ Cf. Carlyle’s Fr£derick the Great.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

406

tempest of the Reformation, and the long tumultuous
swell that succeeded it, the little barque of Liegnitz
sailed gaily on, leaking indeed and scurvily furnished,
yet ever painted and pot-valiant, vagabond and
versatile, ‘nailing her colours to the fence,’ pointing
her prow to whichsoever port might beckon with
most glittering allure.

At the death of the aforesaid Friedrich II. in 1547,
the ducal debts amounted already to 63,000 florins, but
they might without difficulty have been settled, had
not his successor, Friedrich III. (or the Mad), when
summoned hastily from France, undertaken, with easy
quixotism, to defray them from his own sorely ex-
hausted exchequer. Now the new Duke was that
jovial roysterer of whom Sastrow and other chroni-
clers give so cheerful a description. He had passed
his youth in pursuit of the traditional avocations of
his race, and his name was already a by-word in
Germany for bibbing and borrowing. His payments,
therefore, consisted, as might be surmised, in yet
further pointless and incessant journeyings, whence
apes and peacocks rather than gold, resulted, and new
debts were heaped on the old.^ In addition, his ‘ ex-
cellently evil life ’ became in every way so displeasing
to his over-lord, Ferdinand, Kang of Bohemia, that,
finally, when he had once again in airy defiance
betaken himself to France, he was condemned to im-
prisonment and forfeiture of the duchy. On his sub-
missive return, however, he was forgiven and reinstated,
when his first act was to invite the already hostile
Estates to take over debts amounting to 300,000 florins
and also to lend him a considerable sum. They bore
with him for two or three years, but at last the blow
fell, and he was dispossessed in favour of his eldest
son Heinrich, who, at the age of twenty, was living in
the odour of loyalty and decorum in the Imperial Court
at Augsburg. Heinrich was reigning Duke, and old

* ‘ You start fools and you return much bigger fools,’ said Geiler von
Kakersberg of his runagate countrymen.

INTRODUCTORY 407

Friedrich a prisoner in the Schloss at Liegnitz, in an
iron-bound chamber called (with caustic gaiety) the
Rose-Room, when the young Schweinichen entered
upon his Court life ; and of the notable use to which
Duke Heinrich turned his father’s not insignificant
example the chronicler tells at considerable length in
his Memoirs.

The question remains as to when these Memoire
were composed and what was their author’s purpose
with regard to them. They were written in three
separate parts, of which the first carries the story
down to the year 1578, the second to the year 1591,
and the third to the year 1602. The original MSS. of
two of these portions were destroyed by fire in the
eighteenth century, and it is not improbable that one
or more later volumes may have shared a like fate.
For Schweinichen did not die till 1616, and there is no
sign of a formal conclusion to his labours. He pro-
duced, in fact, three other works dealing with his Court
services, one of which, a life of Duke Heinrich XL of
Liegnitz, has been published.*

Hans’s intentions concerning the Memoirs were
misanthropic. Written for his own instniction only,
and for the glory and edification of his Maker, ‘ the
following my Book or Memorial’ was to be beheld
by no mortal eye. ‘ I pray my inheritors, whomso-
ever they may be, that if this book cometh into their
hands, they will guard it as gold, and preserve it in
secret without respect to its worth; for this cause
and reason, that vulgar babblers, chatterers, and
gossips should not come near it, babbling me out of
my grave, making laughter thereover and holding me
up to mockery, as though I had meant to leave
books behind me, the which never entered my mind.
Therefore should it be entrusted to no one to read,
for loyalty is a wild animal, and out of loyalty may
come disloyalty,’ If they disobey his commands, he
sternly concludes, they will trouble his soul : ‘ and it
* Scriftores Rerum Silesiacarum^ vol. iv.

408 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

shall be difficult for them to answer for it to God, and
maybe upon this earth they shall have and receive
unpleasantnesses from my spirit.’

His injunctions were set aside, and we are glad of it
For, though but a humble player in the game of life
and in his person wholly without importance, Hans
is none the less an excellent companion ; and he has
paid his mite more generously than many greater men
into the mint of memory.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Nos vagabunduli,
Lseti, jucunduli,

Tara, tantara teino :
Edimus libere,
Canimus lepide,

Tar^ tantara teino :
Risu dissolvimur,
Pannis obvolvimur,
Tara, tantara teino :

Multum in joculis,
Crebro m poculis,

Tara, tantara teino :
Dolo consuimus,

Nihil metuimus,

Tara, tantara teino :
Pennus non deficit,
Praeda nos reficit,

Tara, tantara teino.

Old Song.

On the Midsummer Monday of the year 1552, in the
ducal Castle of GrOditzberg in Silesia, there was born
to the ‘ worshipful and well-named ’ Herr Jorge
Schweinichen of Mertschutz and Frau Salome, his
second wife — rich in honours and virtues — a son. The
infant knight’s godparents seem to have been as
numerous and as diversely named as the daughters of
Zelophehad, yet his own nomenclature was modest;
‘ Hans was I called,’ he writes, ' for being bom so soon
after Johannis, which is the mid of summer.’ But lest
any should think this a derogation from the high
pinnacle of nobility (‘ primaeval and most praise-
worthy’) to which he belongs, he appends the eight
shields of his immediate forefathers, and would
willingly and with ease produce as many more as
might be asked for : ‘ Ego sum natus in aula et non in
caula ’ is the conclusion of several pages of high-named
ancestiy.

Herr Jorge von Schweinichen was Governor of the

410 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Goldberg district in the duchy of Liegnitz, and
Captain of the great castle on the GrOditzberg, so
Hans spent the most of his childhood within these
lordly walls, being there brought up to righteousness
and the fear of God. At the age of nine he was sent
to learn reading and writing from the town-scribe of
MertschQtz, his holidays and spare hours being
devoted to herding geese at his father’s house hard
by. This career was, however, clipped in the bud, for
one day, being more than common annoyed by the
scatter-brained habits of his charges, he fastened aU.
their beaks widely ajar: ‘and then they really did
stay quiet ; but they also became a trifle thirsty, and
my lady mother, becoming aware of it, gave me a right
good knock. And I minded the geese no more.’

Having thus bravely proved his inaptitude for a
bucolic life, Hans passed from thirsty geese to thirsty
princes. ‘ When I had begun to read a little and in
writing could just make crowsfeet, I was, in the year
’62, given over by my dear father to His Princely
Grace Duke Friedrich the Third at Liegnitz, where he
was then ke'pt in custody.’ The intention apparently
was that he should pursue his studies in the company
of the younger Frederick, second son of the captive
prince. But his actual business, though eminently
educational, was scarcely of a literary nature.

Hans’s duties at the Court were, in fact, various and
strange. First, he had to attend on the old Duke in his
chamber, to carry food and drink to him, and to
render all the services of a page ; and when His Grace
had enjoyed a carouse, which was often, to sleep in his
room, since the princely person ‘ did not willingly go
to bed when he was in liquor.’ Next, he was solemnly
appointed master of the cellar, an office that carried
the curious duty of collecting in a little barrel, ‘ holding
about a pailful,’ the wine that was left over from Duke
Friedrich’s daily allowance. So soon as this was full,
His Grace invited congenial spirits, and none might
leave till all was drunk up. Hans had also in his

THE SCHOOLING OF A PAGE 41 1

charge the ducal rapier, known as ‘ My maid Kathe.’
And when the elderly Frederick roared out, ‘ PujBF!
Basmatter ! Give me my maid Kathe to dance with,’
the page was certain to receive therefrom ' a royal box
on the ear.’ By the adroit use of flattery he might,
indeed, then earn a silver penny as compensation, ‘ but
the box on the ear was much better than twenty
pennies, and meant very great favour, which I would
gladly have done without.’^ Again, Hans had in
his keeping Duke Friedrich’s gun or blow-pipe
{Blaserohre) with its slugs and bullets; and also,
when any shooting was to the fore, charge of the
counterfeit birds.* If the Prince had friends to shoot
with him, and the birds were hit, the boy received a
kreutzer, ‘which many a day brought me in six or
seven pennies; for I must have new birds made by
the carver, and gave for each one only two farthings.’
Finally, the old Duke was at this time, ‘ being in custody,
very God-fearing,’ and evening and morning, were he
full or fasting, he prayed industriously, all in Latin —
a ceremony that laid but an insecure foundation to
his page’s future acquaintance with that classic
tongue.

Nor was this the end of Hans’s responsibilities, for
he was also at the beck and call of Duke Friedrich’s
consort and her ladies, and their habits were no less
remarkable than those of their lord. For instance, if
the old Duchess chanced to bathe, Hans must ‘wait
upon her in her bath as a page,’ while the maids,

^ ‘ Commonly gentlemen, when they beginne to be merrye, for sport
make theire Pages swell theire Cheekes with winde, which they strike
with the Palme of theire hands, to breake the wynde with a noyse, and
if they present them a fayre blowe, they give them Drznckgelty that is
drincking mony (for so they call all guifts, as if they had no other use
but for drincking).^ {Shakespear^s Europe^ ‘ Uun dist : Je suis des
favoritz du Roy, car ce matin il a crasch^ suz moy.’ (From the
passage on pages in Claude Chappuis’ Discours de la CourJ)

* * The Germans use like exercises of shooting with Musketts . . .
at an Image of some birde sett on the topes of maypoHes, where he
that hitts the head hath the greatest prise, he that hitts the winge
hath the next, and he that hitts the Foote hath the third. i^Skake-
speards Europe^

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

412

though no more cumbered with clothing than Eve,
did not hesitate to summon the boy with relays of
water. ‘ I know not how it happened,’ he says on one
occasion, ‘but I upset the cold water all over her.’
The lady screamed, and complained to the Duchess,
who laughed and said, ‘ My Pigling {Schweinlein) is
certainly going to be virtuous.’

Hans’s labours were not lightened by the fact that
the two dukes were ever at variance. For Duke
Friedrich, not unnaturally, disliked his supplanter,
and often, ‘when overcome by sorrow,’ complained
bitterly of him. ‘ Son,’ he exclaimed once with pro-
phetic fervour, ‘as you hold me imprisoned now, so
will others hold you imprisoned hereafter.’ Yet, when
Duke Heinrich visited his father, the old lord ‘put
everything aside and had a good drink with him.’
At last the crisis (so far as Hans was concerned) came,
for Duke Friedrich ordered the boy to place a
pasquillum, which he had himself written against his
son, upon the court preacher’s pulpit. The pastor
read it aloud, to the great edification of his listeners ;
but Duke Heinrich’s soul was moved to wrath, and
Hans, after little more than a year’s service, was
withdrawn from the Court by his father. He did not
return there permanently till after Friedrich’s death,
which took place in the year 1570, after thirteen
years of custodia ; on which auspicious occasion there
was a goodly funeral, Hans among others being
privileged to carry the lights, and thus ‘to escort
His Princely Grace, my first master, to His Grace’s
Ruhebettlein!

The intervening years were spent mainly at the
great Goldberg school, where he enjoyed the company
of about 140 students, ‘ gentle and noble,’ not to speak
of the commoners, who amounted to more than 300.
His father allowed him two thalers a year as pocket-
money, with the additional bounty of twenty-two
silver pennies (Weissgroschen) for the purchase of
books and a velvet cap. To this his mother con-

THE SCHOOLING OF A PAGE 413

tributed a gift of two Hungarian florins and a long
white feather,^ which he laid away so carefully and
visited so frequently, that it aroused the suspicions
and cupidity of a fellow-student In fact, this adroit
youth shortly removed the whole of Hans’s small store
of money and left him penniless : ‘ yet could I complain
neither to the master, nor to my mother.’ He seems,
however, to have held his own with the other students,
having for his special disciple ‘ a raw child, unapt to
books,’ but willing at any moment to fight his hero’s
battles for the sake of ‘ a bite of honey.’ Beer, it
would appear, had more attractions for Hans himself
than honey, and, although the fourteen Weissgroschen
which his father paid weekly for his board were
expressly ordained to include ‘ six half-farthings’ worth
of beer above the ordinary,’ this by no means sufficed
him : ‘ and I kicked so well over the traces,’ he records
with pride, ‘ that for the time I was at Goldberg I cost
my father sixty-four thalers, as his register shows.’
His dress at this time consisted of a fustian doublet
with damask sleeves and a cordwain collar, cut into
fine points ; trunk hose made of a coarse brown frieze ;
an old camlet cloak trimmed with velvet ; and a velvet
cap. ‘ And I thought mj'-self by no means the ugliest.’

Neither was the embellishing of the boy’s mind
wholly neglected. When he quitted the Court he
knew only the smaller catechism of Luther, and of
Latin — Duke Friedrich’s long prayers notwithstanding
— how to say ‘ eat and drink.’ But now, under the
anxious guidance of prceceptores, who, for his father’s
sake, held him in high respect, he added largely to
his store of knowledge. ‘ And all the while I did not
receive a single beating, save that Magister Barth
rapped me once over the hands with a ruler for not
reciting the Terentium which I had not learnt, saying :

* ‘ I am a yonker ; a fether I wyll were ;

Be it of goose or capon, it is ryght good gere.’

(Boorde on the UygM Almqyne.)

‘ Ein juncker : a younker, younkster, or youngster.’ (Ludwig.)

414 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

“ Leam it another time, or I shall let down your
breeches.” ’ He was soon, however, taken away from
the school on account of an epidemic of dysentery,
‘and thus, as the saying goes, was my schooling
pricked in the stomach, and in fourteen days I forgot
all that I had learned in five quarters.’

None the less, Hans retained sufficient erudition to
take his place in the world among his elders, and he
soon appears at a burgher wedding, in his best velvet
cap and the famous white feather, conversing in the
classical tongue with the lady whom, despite his
tender years, he had been privileged to escort. ‘ And
especially did this exalt me, that she could speak
several words of Latin, and when she toasted me in
this language and I was able to answer her, I thought
no less than that I knew as much Latin as a doctor,
and was now quite learned enough.’ Yet he often
regretted that he had not followed the advice of his
teachers, and continued his studies. ‘ Can only
suppose that God would not have it so.’

On leaving school, Hans devoted himself chiefly to
sport, passing the time with hawking, coursing, and
the decoying of geese and ducks, for all of which he
had such a passion that he ‘ could neither eat nor
sleep.’ Before long, however, despite his early short-
comings, he was put to more useful occupations, being
made bailiff and ‘ mill-master ’ to his father. * Had to
manage the mill,’ he tells : to measure out the grain,
see to the grinding for the house, keep all the accounts,
give out the fodder, store the thrashings, and look to
the comfort of the many guests, who came to fish in
the brook : in short, ‘ help industriously in the house-
hold, and see to everything.’ Fortunately he developed
a certain liking for this farmyard life, and his sole
grief seems to have been that, whereas his brother
possessed two horses, he himself had not so much as
a donkey, and must ever for his adventures borrow
a mount from his father, or even from one of the
peasants.

THE SCHOOLING OF A PAGE 415

But these peaceful oases were never of long duration,
for the ducal eye was upon him. Often, while still of
a suitable size, he was dressed as a page and pro-
duced at the weddings and festivities of the Court,
remembering, for the benefit of his readers, the various
pranks and jests, more lively than discreet, which,
after the habits of the time, then inevitably took place.
Often, too, he was privileged, under his father’s wing,
to form part of Duke Heinrich’s retinue in his pro-
gresses through the land. This dignity, indeed, brought
moments of regrettable humiliation to his ardent soul,
since he was still too small to bestride with ease the
difficult saddles of the day, with their stirrups hanging
from the pommel, and was, willy-nilly, obliged to sit
meekly in a carriage^ and see another usurping the
coveted post. But, even so, he was seldom without
distractions. Thus, on one occasion, he shared in an
expedition to Franconia and Saxony, which was
enlivened by the sudden birth of a daughter to the
Duchess, by the wayside, with no necessaries of any
kind, and with only the court chaplain for midwife.
They feared at first that it would go ill with the
princely lady, but in five hours’ time she was well able
to continue the journey, and was in fact so little the
worse for the adventure that before the conclusion
of their trip, she also produced a young prince,
with whom the party returned jo3dully to Liegnitz.
Another time, he had the great pleasure of beholding
his father and the Elector of Saxony sprawling
together on the ground. For the two encountered
in a tilt, and when Duke Augustus fell from his
saddle, his opponent, out of politeness, felt com-
pelled to do the same. The spectators laughed, but
the Elector, thinking that the knight had been un-
horsed by his stroke, was so overcome with joy
that he vowed never to tilt again. Nor were personal
quarrels lacking to Hans’s felicity, for young Duke
Friedrich proved an unfailing subject for mockery
^ See Illustrative Notes^ 70.

4i6 an epic of debts

and malice, and no day could be dull that provided so
excellent a butt.

At the age of sixteen Hans accompanied his patron
on an expedition of more than usual importance, this
being no less than a state visit to Lublin, where the
Polish Diet was at the time assembled. The Duke,
mindful of his Piast blood, was not without hopes
of being elected King of Poland on the death of
Sigismund II., and he therefore decked himself out
with a pomp and bravery to which so debt-driven a
prince did not often attain ; riding along nobly, with a
mounted escort eighty horses strong, all finely adorned
and furnished with such enormous yellow plumes
that from the front their riders — themselves brilliant
in silken hats with yellow feathers — ‘ might scarce be
seen.’ ‘ Less than 500 florins’ worth had no man on,’
boasts Hans ; and he himself, we are assured, cut no
unworthy figure in the pageant. For he also was
dressed by his father in the ducal colours : ‘ item, a
doublet of fustian guarded with velvet ; item, a pair of
German trunk hose, the one leg yellow and the other
black, puffed with about sixteen ells of taffeta,^ like-
wise stockings of buckskin, and therewith a black
cloak with folds.’ Add to this the new-won dignity
of a sword and a golden chain,® and we see him in
all his glory; although, as he candidly admits, ‘the

^ Wide trunk hose were much beloved of Germans. Samuel Row-
lands, in his Epigrams (1600), tells of ‘ a most accomplished (English)
cavalier^ :

Walking the streets, his humours to disclose,

In the French doublet and the German hose.

In England, indeed, their popularity became so great as to lead to
a scarcity of the cowhair with which they were stuffed. Cf. the
satire entitled ‘A lamentable Complaint of the poore Cuntry Men
agaynste great hose, for the loss of their cattelles tails.’

^ * ‘ Their Earles (vulgarly called Graves) and their Knights some-
times weare gold chaines, made of extraordinary great linkes, and
not going more th^ once about the necke, nor hanging downe
further then the middle button of the doublet.’ (Fynes Morison.)
These chains were a great ambition of boyhood. Cf. the Complaynte
of Anthony Babingion :

Withe hys owne chayne of golde hee woulde me often decke,

Which made me a prowde boye, to weare aboute my necke.

POLAND

417

weapon was more often under my arm than girded.’
As to the Duke, he was an imposing apparition on a
great horse trapped with velvet, thick emblazoned
with gold and silver. Indeed, King Sigismund was
the only blot on the landscape ; for he was reticently
clad in sable-skin covered with black cloth, ‘ having on
him a great high cap of marten-fur ’ — ^garments which
seemed to the Silesians decidedly inadequate to the
high occasion.

The ducal presents were also on a royal scale, and
included two lions in a wooden cage,^ an eagle-jewel
of great price, a crystal cup and a golden scabbard
all set with precious stones, three long and beau-
tiful gilded muskets, and a hand-gun to carry on the
saddle. On the great day of the presentation the
magnificent offerings — excluding, we may suppose,
the two lions — were borne aloft by Hans and the
equerry, while Hans Schramm, the Chancellor of
Liegnitz, delivered an elegant Latin oration. But
here again Sigismund II. was sadly at fault, for the
King, says the diarist with a proper resentment,
‘suffered only a Polish answer to be made thereto,
and caused the said presents to be taken from us and
carried off by vile Polacks ; whence they came, no one
knew. Amongst ourselves we had thought no other-
wise than that each one should bear away a golden
chain ; but for us were only small fishes, for no one
gained anything.’ In fact, for Duke Heinrich himself
there were only ‘ klein Fischlein,’ since the journey
cost him over 24,000 thalers, ‘ and he derived nothing
therefrom, but only earned ill-favour with the Kaiser,
and squandered money, and had in Lublin so mean a

* Lions were often gfiven as presents at this tiine._ ‘ I send you a
tame young lioness for the New Year,’ writes Duke Wilhelm of Saxony
to his cousins Ernst and Albrecht (1474) : ‘ trusting that she may be
comfortable to your Highnesses and tend to diversion and the passing
of time.’ (Privatbnefe.') Samuel Kiechel saw no less than eight live
Hems belonging lb Queen Ehzabeth in the Tower of London. The
gifts, however, were not always appreciated. When Lady Fanshawe
was offered one in Sp^ she firmly declined i^ saying : ‘ I w^ of so
cowardly a make I durst not keep company with it.’ {^Memoirs.')

4i8 an epic of debts

lodging that at home a sow would surely have had
better ; for my father and Hans Zedlitz the elder lay
together in a room under the roof, where I and young
Hans Zedlitz also lay, as a sow in a sty.’

This expedition, moreover, ended tragically for the
two Schweinichens. Having received news of the
serious illness of Frau Salome, they sought to return
home in haste, but, owing to the robbers who hovered
round the ducal retinue with intent to plunder the
plate-waggon, they were unable to desert their lord.
Indeed, the whole party were at one moment in peril
of their lives, for one of their number having injudici-
ously stolen the two servants of a Pole — ‘ because the
lads were Silesian and good musicians, and could make
music on all instruments ’ — their late hosts fell upon
them 3,000 strong, and had already levelled their
pieces when the causes of contention were fortunately
discovered behind a wall. When at length the father
and son reached MertschUtz, the sick woman was dead.
‘ And it was to me an evil and grievous news ; the
more that I knew that I had ever been liebes Hanslein
to her. And I would far rather have been killed by
the Polacks than have suiFered this great grief on my
home-coming, while to my father it was a heart-
breaking pain and a shortening of his life.’

So the years passed, and the young knight attained,
in his own estimation at least, to manhood. Now
already, he writes at the age of seventeen, ‘ I began in
a measure to trouble about the maids and reckoned
myself, in my own mind, to be a real Meister Fix'
Nor was it long before he was seriously ‘learning
what love is ’ : ‘For I came to love a maid so dearly
that I could not sleep therefrom ; I was not verily so
bold as to tell it to her, yet I shall ever hold that the
first love is the hottest’ Now, too, he thoroughly
learned the art of drinking, which seems to have been
more easily acquired than lost. ‘Since this,’ he de-
clares, after an adventure which ended with two days
and two nights under a table, ‘ I have not only learned

THE DELIGHTS OF LIEGNITZ 419

to drink wine, but learned it thoroughly and well. For
I can truly say it would be impossible for any one to
make me drunk; and I have since then kept it up
bravely. Whether it has been to the furthering of
blessedness and good health, I will tell in its proper
place.’ At ail events, had his head not been properly
strengthened, it could scarcely have been owing to
lack of practice, for he quickly became in great request
at all the festivities of the duchy — ‘weddings, fairs and
christenings ’ ; while far and wide, throughout ail
Germany, his reputation grew. Wherever he went
his mastery of the art ‘gave great delight,’ and in-
variably he held the field against all champions.
Once only did his head play him false, when, to the
detriment of his stainless fame, he was forced to pass
the night in a wine-barrel, into which he had un-
wittingly betrayed himself.

Before long, in fact, he was more popular in the
neighbouring courts than his master, and the Elector
Augustus of Saxony even invited him to enter his
service. The young Silesian, though tempted by the
offer, could not quite make up his mind to such a
change. ‘ I know not what were the causes that I
could not forsake Duke Heinrich,’ he tells, ‘ whether
the maids in the women’s apartments were too comely,
or what was the way of it. Must only suppose
that it was God’s will.’ A passage only a few pages
later helps perhaps to read the riddle : ‘ For had I
at this time been compelled to fall from heaven to
earth, I would have wished to fall nowhere save at
Liegnitz, in the women’s apartments. I ever thought
that the prettiest maids were at Liegnitz; so it was
there that my heart hung, and had I to go thither it
was a great joy.’ Indeed, whatever his faults, Hein-
rich XL seems to have kept his Court in a condition
of perpetual liveliness. ‘ It was a merry place,’ repeats
Hans with enthusiasm, ‘ filled with music and dancing,
and all manner of gladness.’ His Grace asked no
better than that his friends should drink and dance

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

420

at the Castle the whole night long. ‘ We went often
with the music to his room ; up he would get and be
well pleased ; had often a good drink also with us in
bed. Whereby our master gained favour with his
household and good attendance.’ In a word, one
only thing did Heinrich demand of his junkers : that
they would be gay.

Nor were the Duke’s diversions lacking in the in-
terest of variety. Maskeries were perhaps his greatest
delight, and almost every evening he would roam
about the town in disguise, visiting the burgesses, of
whom some were pleased to see him, others not. For
this particular form of prank, by the way, Hans had
no taste, the more, he ingenuously explains, that his
master invariably made him play the part of nun, and
that the maids whom they visited never wished to
engage in conversation with a seeming female of reli-
gious tendencies.^ On one occasion the jovial Heinrich
arranged a mummery at the Castle, when one Axleben
had to play the part of the Emperor, and drink out of
the very glass that Ferdinand I. had formerly given
to the Duke, the prince himself ofRciating as his cup-
bearer. Unfortunately, the player emptied his goblet
with such Imperial zeal that he was soon on the floor.

‘ There lay the Emperor and all his glory, and His Grace
was overjoyed.’ ‘ Such follies,’ adds the young courtier
loftily, ‘ were His Grace's greatest joy, but my disgust.’

Again, Heinrich was an eager and inveterate gambler,
and might be found of a morning washing — ‘that I
may not in playing make my hands black ’ — the hoard
of money which he was with cheerfulness to lose that

^ Masquerades form the constant theme of German chroniclers and
the constant lament of German preachers. Sebastian Franck de-
scribes their vagaries at length : ‘ Some, without any shame, run about
wholly naked ,* some crawl on all fours like beasts ; . . . some go on
high stilts, with wings and long bills — they are storks ; some are bears,
sGsnt are wild men of the woods, some are devils ; . . . some are
monkeys^ and some are dressed in fools’ gear : and verily these are
in -iieir right disguise.’ {Chronik,) The Church particularly objected
mthe use of religious dresses : ‘ Those sin most greatly who use the
garments of monks or nuns.’ (Gottschalk Hollen, cf^ Schultz.)

CONJUGAL ALARUMS 421

same night. The Duchess Sophia also had not in-
frequent cause for complaint, and there was in par-
ticular a certain lively Frau Kittlitzin, who kept the
ducal establishment in a state of continual ferment.
In fact, when Hans was formally appointed gentleman
of the bed-chamber and equerry, one of his first duties
— a curious one for so young a courtier — ^was the
reconciling of the Duke and his consort.

The business began with the princess’s refusal to
attend a banquet in the castle, on account of her lord's
philandering with the lady m question, who was also
to be present. ‘ The Duchess would in no wise come,
for the reason that she stood not well with the Frau
Kittlitzin; begged to be honourably and indulgently
excused.’ But the rival lady, who was in the Duke’s
room when this message arrived, made such play with
her tongue that she roused the portly lover to fury,
and he was soon bursting in upon his wife in her private
apartment, ‘ surprising the Duchess unawares.’ Hans,
in attendance, followed hot and all agog upon his
heels. Addressing his wife harshly, Heinrich de-
manded the reason of her refusal, and insisted on
immediate submission to his commands. The Duchess,
however, held her ground, plainly saying that she
would not sit by the side of ' that vile woman ’ ; and
this so swelled the prince’s violent rage that, shouting
out, ' Thou shalt know that the Frau Kittlitzin is no vile
woman,’ he beat the Duchess ‘ a good box of the ears,
wherefrom in truth Her Princely Grace staggered.’
Hans rushed to the rescue, and, seizing the Duke in his
arms, held him till the princess could fly into her
bedroom : ‘ yet my lord would after her and beat
her better.’ Making for the bedroom door, the hardy
equerry slammed it under his master’s nose, so that he
could not follow, whereat His Grace raged, ‘ declaring
that it was not my business to censure him : she was
his wife, he could do with her as he willed.’ Hans
argued respectfully, but the irate prince would by no
means be bridled ; would, in brief, be after the Duchess

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

422

in her chamber. The lady, however, had by now made
her position safe, and Schweinichen discreetly re-
tired ; for, as he says elsewhere, ‘ it was not good to be
near His Grace when His Grace was buzzing.’

An hour later the Duke sent for him and inquired,
in an angry voice, what business he had to meddle in
this fashion between man and wife. Hans apologised,
saying that he had done it from no ill motive, but had
sought only the good of his master, and how to turn
away an evil ‘ which might have woven itself to a
worse web ’ ; then, knowing the character of Heinrich,
who could never be angry for long, stepped on one
side. For a quarter of an hour His Grace kept silence,
then lowered his pride and begged Hans, by hook or
crook, to arrange the matter. So the equerry, full of
gratification and importance, promised to put forth his
highest efforts.

Back he now sped to the Duchess, to expound the
immense grief and remorse of his master, with ‘ what-
soever further words I could find serviceable to my
business.’ Indeed, he was guilty of no small exaggera-
tion, both as to the penitence of the culprit and the
benefits that should accrue from submission, airily
promising that, should the lady suffer herself to be
pacified, and return fair words to her lord, ‘ His Grace
would present her with a goodly gift, and I would see
to it that he should visit her in her chamber (for other-
wise my master had not for a full quarter-year visited the
Duchess), and whatsoever further of the like sort I could
think of.' Sophia, however, would do nothing of the
kind : ‘ gave instead sharp strokes in reply, for she was
still in a fury, and vowed that for this box on the ear
she would bring her lord to the uttermost want’ And
it was not fill Hans artfully reminded her that should
she bring her spouse to misery, she would herself also
fall into the same ditch, that he even partially suc-
ceeded. ‘ Brought it at length so far that Her Grace
ccaisented to go to the banquet, although she had a
Mue eye from the blow. Yet only on the under-

A MATCHMAKER 423

standing that the Kittlitzin should not sit with her
at the table, and that the Duke should in truth visit
her in her chamber, since she was anxious to speak
with my lord ; all which I undertook to arrange.’

The triumphant diplomatist now sought his master
and announced his success. But a fresh obstacle
confronted him. The culprit vrould agree to neither
point, and, since the Duchess also would budge no
further inch, * there was I between door and hinge,
and knew no remedy.’ Undefeated, Hans returned
to the charge, and at last his honeyed tongue won
the day. For in the end the Duke went himself to
his wife and implored her to be reconciled, agreeing
that Frau Kittlitzin, since she was Mistress of the
Household, should eat with the maids of honour :
* which, when the Kittlitzin heard, I was like to being
buried by her.’ Ten trumpets and a kettledrum
instantly blew to table, and a convivial evening
followed, the noble lady giving out that she had struck
against a cupboard. ' And how it went with the Duke
and Duchess in her apartments I know not ; anyhow,
he visited her.’ As for Hans, she thanked him that he
had helped towards peace, and he had thenceforward a
gracious princess.

If the Duke experienced difficulties in the conduct of
his own matrimonial chariot, he entertained no doubts
as to his ability to direct the love-affairs of others.
An industrious matchmaker, he suffered no impedi-
ment of claim or climate to turn him from his
philanthropic path. Thus he once nearly lost his life
— and that of his reluctant attendant — through his
anxiety to promote the marriage of the Polish am-
bassador. Having started out, on a windy November
night and in a butcher’s cart, to obtain the consent of
Duke George of Brieg, the unwieldy conveyance became
frozen into the ice, and not all the butcher’s frantic
cries for help could extricate them before the morning.
‘ And if I did not this night freeze,’ writes Hans, ‘ I
hope not soon to freeze, for greater cold have I never

424 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

suffered.’ Nor was the reward adequate to the pains
entailed, for, as the lady was unbeautiful, a hunchback,
and with no particular fortune, the ambassador
declined in the end to be burdened with her.

The Duke was also naturally much interested in the
love-prospects of his equerry, and did all that he
could to encourage him on the perilous path of matri-
mony. On one occasion, for example, when a certain
little lady of fourteen years, to whom Hans had made
fleeting love through the medium of sugar-plums, was
to be married, against her will, to an elderly suitor,
Duke Heinrich urged him to intervene. ‘ On that
same day I was summoned to Liegnitz, I knew not
wherefore. And after the meal the Duke sent me a
beautiful garland of golden roses, adorned with gold,
with the news that Fraulein Hese Promnitz was this
day to be betrothed with the wreath ; ^ but that if it
were my will, as it was His Princely Grace’s will and
the lady’s, I might snatch the wreath first before
Geisler. And thus did His Grace drive me into great
perplexity, that made me so anxious that I broke out
in sweat, knew not what to answer, but was dumb for
a long while ; for it was on my mind how to say no
again, and I could by no means decide. And when at
last I must say yes or no, it seemed as though a voice
said in my ear, “ Accept not the garland ” ; where-
upon I quickly departed, rendering thanks to His
Princely Grace for his graciousness, but my affairs
allowed me not to take a wife. And when I had said
this my heart became quite light and gay, and I felt
as though I were in a new and merrier skin ; whence
I could take it for certain that God would not have it
so.’ His decision, indeed, did not deter him from
attending the betrothal ceremony, or from assisting
the now unrivalled bridegroom to perform his part
under the disappointed eyes of the maiden. He even
went so far as to cause his shield to be painted up in
the inn with the motto : ‘ I wait the time : when dies
* See Illustrative Notes, 71,

TENDER OFFICES

42s

the man, I take the wife’; at which the expectant
husband was incensed, not unnaturally supposing that
Hans was anticipating his death. ' But I might have
been there before him, had I wished it,’ says the
youthful braggart.

The ladies Kittlitzin formed also a tender link
between Heinrich and Hans ; for if the master held
the mother in esteem, the equerry displayed a warm
admiration for the daughters. Their persons were
beautiful, he records, their words lovely, and their
circumstances golden; ‘and it was easy to perceive
that they would gladly have remained hanging round
my neck.’ Indeed, it was owing to their affectionate
offices that Hans was finally burdened with a per-
manent court appointment. For, with matrimony in
their eye, the ladies, abetted by the Duke, were
determined on the social and pecuniary advancement
of the young knight. Hans himself did not by any
means covet the honour,^ having already discerned, it
would seem, the less shining side of the brilliant
shield of Liegnitz, and being, moreover, conscious that
the larger joys of the Empire were beckoning to him.
The prince, however, ‘ taking a gracious pleasure in
my waiting and service, and being well satisfied with
my person,’ would accept no denial, and, to attain his
end, arranged that Hans should be invited by Frau
Kittlitzin to a meal. ‘And, since the damsels were
comely and kind, I accepted. And when we had eaten
and were at our merriest there appeared the Duke, as
another jolly fellow for the feast, and he was gay and
merry with us.’ Finding that Hans still resisted his
flatteries and blandishments, on the following day he
sent ‘ the old Kittlitzin and her daughters to me, who
begged me most industriously, having without doubt a
hope that I should fall to the portion of one of them.’
The victim stole away and hid himself in an inn, but
even here the Duke found him out : ‘ Came to me with
a musica, was merry and of good cheer, and drank
* See Illustrative Notes, 72,

426 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

with me a glass of wine, praying me, if I loved
him, not to refuse.’ Hans, outmanceuvred, capitulated,
and then ‘ was His Princely Grace verily joyful, took
me with him to the Castle, and we revelled the whole
night long.’

The ladies Kittlitzin, however, do not seem to
have gained much from the transaction, for Hans’s
errant fancy was soon to dance to other and more
delicate pipings. For the moment, indeed — in his
own words — he was not troubling much about girls.
‘ For one was as good as another : wherever I came
I found one, and whenever I went I left one.’

It was in the year 1575 that Hans embarked upon the
arduous office of gentleman of the bedchamber and
equerry to Duke Heinrich, with a yearly salary of
30 thalers and a bonus of 45 thalers for the pur-
chase of two court suits. He was to have no horse
or servant of his own, but was to share those of his
master.

The burning question of the moment was the
succession to the crown of Poland. Sigismund II.
had died in 1572, and the brief and feverish reign of
Henry of Valois was already at an end. For in the
June of 1 574, on hearing of the death of his brother,
Charles IX., the Duke of Anjou had escaped back to
France, leaving the unhappy little kingdom, which he
had sworn ‘ not without tears ’ never to desert, to all
the horrors of anarchy and civil war. The Duke of
Liegnitz was therefore overflowing with hope, and,
although there were at least a dozen other candidates
in the field, including an emperor and a king, he
spared no effort or expense to substantiate his claims.
His visits to his Polish friends were innumerable.
‘And they anointed his mouth with honey,’ writes
Hans, ‘but gave him gall to drink; for there was

EAST PRUSSIA WITH PARTS OP POLAND AND POMERANIA.

From a woodcut illustrating the *Historia de Buropa* of AEnoaa Sylvius, ed. of 1571.

A STIFF-NECKED DUCHY 427

nothing behind it at all.’ In the momentary expansion
of ’ a great carouse ’ the Poles would acclaim Dtrtce
Heinrich as king and break their glasses in his
honour ; but nothing was further from their thoughts
or desires than his election.

A second question that was rocking the Duchy of
Liegnitz to its foundations was that of the ducal debts.
For the first years of his reign, Heinrich XL, warned
by the fate of his father and grandfather, had en-
deavoured to maintain a prudent economy ; but latterly
his feet had fallen into the familiar and inherited paths,
and to the dispassionate eye there was now little
to choose between himself and his progenitors. His
expenses exceeded by far his income, and the tale of
his liabilities was mounting in an alarming fashion :
‘ his debts had woken up, and he was threatened on all
sides.’

The chief business of the Duke’s days had therefore
grown to be the devising of ingenious schemes where-
by additional funds might be procured. One of these
was masterly in its directness ; ‘His Grace,’ writes
Hans briefly, ‘took the whole district into custodia,
and demanded that they should help him out of
his debts.’ His simple prayer was for 100,000 thalers'
worth of jewels and 100,000 thalers' worth of land,
and when the Duchy, inappreciative of his modera-
tion, declined this with unanimity and turbulence, he
assembled the delinquents in the hall of the castle,
surrounded them with his men, and summoned them
to yield up their arms. As they refused to obey this
order they were driven into the courtyard: ‘And
what His Grace meant to do with them I know not,
but they would not submit, and so it remained all the
evening.’ The morrow was Christmas Day, and, in
the hope of softening their hearts, the Duke took the
whole company to church with him, and then fed
them profusely in the great dining-hall. But at night
matters ‘went ill again, as before’; and Heinrich was
soon not only diligently guarding his prisoners but

428 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

also threatening the town. ^ All was vain, and after a
few days the Duke had to Ik the captives loose. And
* from this arose grievous harm to His Grace and to
the whole country, which cost thereafter many tons of
gold; and lord and vassals were never again re-
conciled in all their lives, but for the most part died
thus ajar.’ The elder Schweinichen, adds his son,
never recovered from the adventure, having been
forced to lie upon the ground for several nights, while
both he and many other of the more loyal subjects had
well-nigh ruined themselves by supplying the Duke
with money and by acting as surety on his behalf.
‘ And yet would my father not desert his lord, but so
often as he was summoned he went.’

Having extracted but little from the already im-
poverished country, and hearing, to his lively annoy-
ance, that an Imperial Commission had been appointed
to inquire into the debts and disturbances of Liegnitz,
Duke Heinrich now determined upon a pilgrimage
round Germany, with the object of borrowing money
from the neighbouring princes and of securing their
good-will and support. Before long, therefore, the
Duke and his equerry, with garments new garnished
and a purse full of borrowed money, started on their
journey. And this peregrination, though intended to
be for a few weeks, lasted two years and more.

Their first destination was Prague, as Duke Heinrich
wished to assure the Emperor of the innocence of his
intentions. Here they stayed for three days. Failing,
however, to obtain a personal audience from Maxi-
milian IL, they travelled on quickly to the Palatinate :
so quickly, indeed, that ' in all my life,’ writes Hans,

‘ I have never been so tired, my strength would
hardly have been great enough even to crack an egg ’ ;
and that when at last, as the culmination of their
fatigues, there appeared ‘the hill of Heidelberg so
high to climb,’ he was ‘well-nigh defeated.’ They
were comforted, however, for their pains by the
friendly welcome of the Elector Palatine, ‘a pious,

FROM COURT TO COURT 429

right-minded gentleman,’ and his exceedingly beauti-
ful Electress. The only other visitor at the Castle
was the Prince de Condd,^ who had been chased from
France, and was now seeking men and money from his
host. At the meal that followed, Hans was unfortu-
nately not privileged to assist, for the Elector invariably
ate in his own apartment, with none to wait upon him,
save servants who had performed the same duty for
many years. ‘And this was the reason: that, as His
Electoral Grace was a God-fearing prince, who held
violently by the Calvinist doctrine, so, when he went
to and from his repasts, he might with his consort the
more freely pray and sing hymns. Therefore, the
Elector had only my lord to table with him, whereat,
for my part, I was well content, in that I could stay
with the squires, for otherwise I should have been
waiting on my master at his drink.’ Yet history may
be allowed to regret this cloistral arrangement; for
it is difficult to imagine a less congruous pair than
Heinrich XL of Liegnitz and Frederick III. of the
Rhine, the most spiritually-minded prince of the
Empire,® and a faithful record of their conversation
could not have been without interest. As for Hans,
he looked after himself, in his usual cheerful fashion :
‘We ate with the electoral councillors in princely
wise ; and each might drink what he loved best, since
commonly there were no carousals held at the Court.
But the wine was so good that I had a little orgy all
to myself.’

Support having been duly promised, and gifts
presented, the visitors went their way, first to Mainz
and then to Neuburg, where they found everything
that could be desired except money. But the old

* Henri, Prince de Conde, one of the chiefs of the Huguenot
party.

® Frederick III. (1559 — 1576) was the first Elector Palatine of the
Simmeri^he line, the Wittelsbach stem having come to an end with
Otto Heinrich, nephew of Frederick II. He was so simple in his
tastes and arrangements that both at his daughter s wedding and his
own second marriage the music and the cooks had to be hurriedly
supplied by the Margrave of Brandenburg.

430 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Duke of Bavaria added to the customary offerings
the welcome loan of a thousand golden thalers. So,
temporarily uplifted— though their mere travelling
expenses had already considerably exceeded this sum
—they returned to Prague, to the ‘ Inn of the Three
Crowns in the Old Town,’^ for the purpose of con-
fronting the Liegnitz delegates in the presence of
Maximilian. ‘And thus in so short a time as two
weeks and a half,’ boasts Hans, ‘ we had travelled over
209 miles ; having, moreover, lain still for many days,
and also drunk much.’

The delegates were by no means pleased to see the
wanderers appear on the bridge at Prague, or to hear
the trumpets of the postmaster; having imagined,
with the fond confidence of desire, that Duke Heinrich
had by now run through his [meagre all, and, like his
father before him, betaken himself to France, leaving
the field clear for his opponents. Neither party, how-
ever, derived much benefit from their zeal, for after a
tedious delay of six weeks, during which time the
Emperor repeatedly, postponed the appointed audience,
it was merely announced that the commission should
be sent to Silesia to inquire into the state of affairs.
And ‘ matters remained as they had been before.’

Hans now hoped that his master would turn his
impecunious countenance homewards, and industri-
ously advised this prudent course. But the Duke had
bent his princely mind to pleasure : ‘ His Grace would
stay in Prague.’ There chanced also at this time the
coronation of the Archduke Rudolph as King of
Bohemia, and this proved an irresistible bait. It was
celebrated with jousts and tilting at the ring, all of
which Duke Heinrich enlivened with his presence.

* ‘ Prague is divided into three quarters, between which flows the
Moldau. Each quarter is sundered from the other by a wall, and
forms, as it were, a dty to itself. Yet do the three quarters together
make but one Prague. There are, namely, a New Town and an Old
Town, which are inhabited by heretics. The t hi r d part of the town,
with the castle, lies beyond the river, and Christians dwell therein. .
The Old Town lies all in the plain, and is wonderfully adorned with
beautiful buildings.’ (Butzbach.)

IGNOBLE KINSMEN 431

‘ And I had at that time a heavy waiting ; for His
Grace remained commonly as guest, and I must at
all times stand by him at his drink, which fell heavily
upon me.’ Soon, too, ‘ the pious gentleman ’ arrived
at the very end of his money. To visit the Hebrews
with pledges became their only resource, and Hans’s
burdens grew.

Yet, even so, Heinrich XI. had no intention of return-
ing ingloriously to Liegnitz. Rather would he dress
himself and his retinue royally ‘ after the Italian manner,
in red damask and black cloaks bordered with a gold
galloon,’ and betake him to Venice and Italy to
see the great armada, splendid from the battle of
Lepanto. With this laudable object in view they
therefore set out, a goodly party of over twelve
persons, with mounted escort and carriages in great
state. ‘ And when His Grace left Prague he had no
more than three hundred and thirty-five thalers for his
expenses, of which I was the spender and had it in my
charge. It may easily be conceived that with such a
sum a prince had not much to spend. Nevertheless,
he strengthened his heart, thinking that we should
surely procure money on the way from nobles and
friends.’

Thesingen was their first resting-place and their
first disillusionment, for the Duchess, wife of the
Elector John George of Brandenburg, was the Duke
of Liegnitz’s sister-in-law, and disapproved highly of
him and his ways. When Hans, on his master’s behalf,
requested her to advance 300 florins towards the
Italian adventure, she therefore ‘ wholly declined
{schlug ganzlich ahX though generously offering to
pay all expenses of the journey back to Liegnitz. And
they parted in the morning ‘ more in anger than in
love and friendship.’

At Ntlremberg the town council was invited to lend
4,000 florins, but also — in the invariable formula —
* schlug ganzlich ab.’ Here, too, Duke Heinrich
received an unpleasant snub from his brother-in-law,

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

432

the Margrave of Anspach. The young Liegnitz
princesses had for some time been living with their
uncle at Anspach, and thither Hans was now dis-
patched to fetch them ; in the idea that, when once
they had been secured as hostages, the Duke could
make his own terms, and thus be provided as well
with a pardon for past offences as with money to
assist him in prosecuting future ones. But the
Margrave, justly indignant at the famous box on the
ear which Heinrich had given to his sister, firmly
declined to yield up the nieces, and, when the question
of money was mooted, ‘ schlug ganzlich ab.’ More,
instead of supplies, he sent a hortatory message,
counselling the errant Duke to return forthwith to the
agreeable duty of ‘ loving, honouring and supporting ’
his wife. As Hans rode dismally out of the Anspach
gates, the trumpets of the watchmen blared forth the
cheerful and appropriate notes ;

Hat dich der Sclumpf berauen

So zeuch mm wieder anheim.

‘ And thus fell through His Grace’s plans once more.’

None the less, Duke Heinrich and his equerry
remained ‘ merry and stout of heart,’ and, albeit they
had no money, suffered themselves not to be downcast
The Duke gambled ‘ often and much ’ with the
burgesses of Nflremberg, winning from them as much
as 255 thalers; but, as he promptly converted these
into silver dishes, and as his expenses amounted to
more than that sum, he left the town no richer than
he had entered it. Indeed, it was only by the sale
of a valuable jewel that he was able to leave it at all

Augsburg was to be the next Golconda of the ducal

^ The citizens of a German town had to take turns in keeping watch
on the church steeples and town gates on pain of a fine of one mark.
(Beckmann.) Contarini describes the tower of the Great Church of
Vienna as having room at its summit * for the habitation of four men
and their families, who are shut up there within ; and they may not
come down save on the Sabbath per andar al astira. And the said
meal have provisions, and blow the trumps and pipes and trumpets
when, occasion shows ; and when any troop of horse appears, they
blow as n^ny limes as there are horses.’ {Itifierario.)

GOLDEN DAYS AT AUGSBURG 433

party, and in this magnificent city Heinrich repeated
the process, winning and losing many hundred thalers.
They lay, appropriately enough, at Jorg Lindenauer's,
in the Weinmarkt,^ passing leisured and ambrosial
days. ^And it was a good life, for the host fed us
well, and we had daily the most beautiful music, and
were overdone with good food ; till I at last could no
more eat fat birds and trout and salmon, nor drink
the Muscatel and Rhine wines, for they were in too
great plenty.’ Each day they walked among the
churches and warehouses, eyeing the pretty wenches,
drinking and playing, and being lustig tmd guter Dinge
(merry and of good cheer) * as it is easy in Augsburg
to be.’ Often, too, Hans "was invited out by rich
friends, of whom he soon acquired a goodly number;
* and they did me great honour, and I was soon very
well known.’ The taverns also provided a fine diver-
sion, for there were all the knightly amusements
that you could desire. For eighteen Weissgroschen a
head you could feed your guests with twenty courses
and the best Rhine wines, while for a thaler apiece
you were royally entertained. ^ And I could well have
wished that such a life should last for many and long
years.’

Hans, however, soon excited his master’s envy by
the variety and charm of his invitations, and at last,
unable to bear it any longer, the Duke determined to
share them. One day, therefore, when the equerry
was bidden to the wedding of a distinguished family,
the prince announced his intention of accompanying
him. ‘ But we knew of no other means to this end
than this, that he should be my servant and wait
upon me ; and so it had thus to be, and His Grace
went with me to the wedding, and waited upon me, as
beseems a servant. Now I know not how it was,’ he
adds delicately, ‘ but the lackey made a mistake and

^ Montaigne, who visited Augsburg only five years later, describes
himself as lodging ‘ a I’enseigne d’un arbre nome Linde au pais, joignant
le palais des Foulcres (Fuggers)^ in the Weinmarkt.

434 an epic of debts

had a little carousal, so that I was obliged to have him
taken away.’ Not a whit was Duke Heinrich abashed,
and, having slept off his indiscretion, he insisted upon
returning in his proper person to the festival, where
he was soon footing it in reverend dignity with two
eminent town-councillors. ‘ Thus was my whilom
servant once more my lord and master.’ When
Hans asked the convivial prince why he had been
so resolved to return, Heinrich answered that it was
because he had seen the many comely damsels giving
his equerry fair words. ‘ And I must acknowledge,’
adds Hans with enthusiasm, ‘ that I had never in my
life seen so many beautiful women together ; ^ for there
were above seventy, and the bride, to please you,
dressed all in white, in damask and taffeta and the
like, and adorned with chains and jewels above
measure.’ The dancing took place in a fine hall that
glistered with gold and silver, and there were more
than a hundred lights, great and small, ‘ whence, as the
saying is, it seemed to be the kingdom of heaven, or
Paradise itself.’ Nor were certain other customs of
Augsburg society displeasing either to the susceptible
equerry or to his master. For, according to the
amiable habit of the place, two persons, clad in long
red garments with one white sleeve, led off the dance,
and it behoved all the other couples to copy their
movements : ‘ When the two dance and turn round the
others also may dance and turn round, and when
the two kiss each other in the dance, then may the
bachelors and maidens, so often as it comes to pass,
also kiss. It happens, therefore, that the said persons
are often pricked on with money to embrace each
other many times in one turn, that so the bachelors
may kiss the maids the more often. As I, indeed, then
also did, and for half a thaler may many kisses be
secured.’ ®

* Montm^e is less enthusiastic about the ladies of Augsburg ;

‘ Nous ne vismes nulle belle fame,’ he writes more than once.

• See Illustrative Notes, 73.

GOLDEN DAYS AT AUGSBURG 435

Another day an invitation was received from the
great merchant-prince, Herr Marx Fugger, to ‘such
a banquet as I have never seen, since verily the
Emperor could not have furnished a better.' Here
was indeed exceeding splendour. The feast was
prepared in a hall that showed more of gold than of
colour. The floor was of marble and as smooth as ice.
And down the whole length of the room stretched a
long sideboard covered with solid golden vessels and
the finest glasses of Venice, ‘ said to be worth far
more than a ton of gold.’ Hans attended on his
master at his drink, and a grievous accident shocked
the serenity of the evening. For the host presented
his distinguished visitor with ‘ a welcome ’ in the form
of a ship ^ of this beautiful Venetian glass, curiously
worked and fashioned. And as the equerry took it
from the side-table, and went with it across the hall,
his new shoes slipped upon the glassy floor. ‘Fell
with it in the middle of the hall on my back,’ he
laments, ‘ poured all the wine over my neck ; and,
since I had on a new red damask dress, did myself
much damage. And the beautiful ship also fell into
many pieces. And though secretly there rose a great
laugh from each and every one, I was afterwards told
that Herr Fugger would gladly have redeemed the
said ship with loo florins. But-it was no fault of mine,
since I had neither eaten nor drunk. Indeed, after-
wards, when I had drunken, I stood much firmer, and
fell not once, even in the dance. Could only suppose,
therefore, that God would not permit splendour to me,

^ ‘It is wonderfuil to see what diversitie of shapes and strange
formes those curious Artists will make in Glasse, as I saw a complete
Gallic, with all her Masts, Sayles, Cables, Tacking, Prowe, Poope,
Forecastle, Anchors, with her long boat, all made out in Cristall
Glasse, as allso a Man compleate in armor.’ (Howell, Survey of
Venice.) The size of some of these welcome cups may be judged from
a later exploit of Schweinichen, who was greeted^ by Count Johann of
Nassau with one that held three quarts of wine. ‘And so they
invented the Willkomm,’ writes Matthaus Friedrich, ‘wherewith
they receive people and make joyful the beloved guest (since they
do him no other honour, they make him full as a sow) : and no
mart may set it down till he has drunk it to the last drop.’

436 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

since I had put on a new dress, and thought myself to
be all-beautiful. For all that, both our masters and we
were merry.’

Herr Fugger led the Duke and his suite all over the
famous palace,^ which was ‘ so large and mighty that
truly the Holy Roman Emperor at the Imperial Diet
might find room therein with all his Court.’ In a little
tower he showed them a collection of chains, jewels
and precious stones, with rare coins and gold pieces,
worth, he told them, more than a million of gold.
Throwing open a chest, which was full to the brim
with solid ducats and crowns, he displayed the
200,000 florins which he was about to lend to King
Philip of Spain; then, leading the visitors up the
turret, he pointed out that from the top to about
half-way down it was lined with nearly 30,000 solid
thalers. ‘And in this he showed His Grace great
honour, and also his power and possessions ; for
they say that Herr Fugger has so much that he could
pay for an empire.’ When Hans fell the great banker
magnanimously presented him with a fine coin ; but
Heinrich, who also expected a handsome guerdon,
received nothing save a good carouse. Indeed, when,
rising grandly to so magnificent an occasion, the Duke
sent Hans to beg the loan of 4,000 thalers, Herr
Fugger wholly though courteously declined to comply,
giving for his chief excuse the Spanish transactions.
On the next day, however, he sent Heinrich 200
crowns and a fine cup worth eighty thalers, together
with a horse caparisoned with trappings of black
velvet, which His Grace — ‘from friendship and with
g;reat thankfulness ’ — accepted.

In no wise disheartened, the Duke now sent
Schweinichen to the Senate — ‘twelve aged, gallant
men, whereamongst were two counts and three
barons ’ — to request the same large sum. And, though
‘young and shy,' Hans found so bold a face and
delivered so lengthy a speech that, after a delay of two
^ See Illustrative Notes, 74,

VICARIOUS BOUNTY 437

hours, he succeeded in obtaining from this renowned
temple of the wise the loan of 1,000 golden thalers for
one whole year without interest.^ The sum, eked out
by some pledged silver, enabled them to pay a part
of their enormous bill at the inn. The remainder was
lent by the landlord on the Duke’s bond, and for a
moment the sun of comparative solvency shone again.
But no sooner did His Grace see that mine host was
so obliging with loans, than he instantly determined
to give a banquet, commanding that it should be ‘ of
the stateliest.’ So, at great expense, Hans must once
more invite a room full of notables, and hosts and
guests were merry ; having, for crowning extravagance,
a ‘ lovely ingenious musical which His Grace rewarded
with twenty crowns. ‘And he thought,’ adds Hans
sarcastically, ‘ that it was not enough.’

The ducal company now took a pompous departure
from Augsburg, and rode to the neighbouring cloister
at Kaisersheim. Nor, even in this dignified retreat,
did Heinrich’s habitual joviality desert him, for, having
been told by the Abbot that he might invite all the
brothers to his room, he hastened to do so. ‘ And in
this he did a good work, since the brothers were
otherwise poorly nourished ; but this evening they
had their fill. And they would gladly have had my
lord stay there for a whole year.’ Hans was, of
course, obliged to borrow from the Abbot the very
money that was to repay him for this outlay. The
unfortunate host at first declined with firmness ; but
he yielded finally to the courtier’s seductive tongue
and ‘ satisfied ’ His Grace with fifty crowns.

More worthy excitements were, however, to hand,
for at the monastery of Zwiefalten the Duke received
a message which resulted in a total change of plan.
This was the offer of a command under the Count

^ It should have better digested its own motto. ^ In the Senate-
house in the street writes Fynes Morison, ‘I found

nothing to answere the magnificence of this city ; onely on the gates
this is written : JVzse men build upon the Rocke^ Footes upon the
Sand:

438 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Palatine Johann Casimir,^ who, subsidised by Elizabeth
of England, was about to invade France on behalf of
the Huguenots ; and, since the matter was immediate
and the opportunity promising, Duke Heinrich
abandoned the thought of Italy, and started off post-
haste for Heidelberg, in the company of the captain of
landsknechts who had brought the welcome news.
As for Hans, the worthy cleric had conceived an
affection for him, and, being anxious to snatch his
soul from the burning, now offered him 200 florins
and perpetual free quarters for himself and three
horses, if he would undertake not to fight against the
Papists. But Hans resisted his blandishments, and,
having fortified himself by ‘ a strong parting carouse
with the Lord Abbot,’ set forth after his master ‘ in
God’s name.’

This was Hans’s first experience of warfare, and he
enjoyed even its least enjoyable features. Thus, when
he arrived at Heidelberg, he found that the Count
Palatine and Duke Heinrich had already started for
France, and it became his lot to follow in the wake of
a hungry army. But no complaint escapes him : ‘ and
it tasted as well as many a boil or roast,’ is his only
comment upon a half-gnawed loaf which he was
forced to share with his men and his horses. He
came up with the main body a few miles beyond
Saarbrttcken : ‘ and His Grace was glad to get me
again ; and I was also glad to be again with my lord.’

The main body consisted of only one squadron of
horse and 1,000 foot-soldiers, and strenuous efforts
were made to procure recruits. But the country was
remarkably unproductive, and had it not been for the
arrival of a Danish contingent, 9,000 strong and ‘ a joy
to behold,’ the enterprise would have promptly died
of inanition. Duke Heinrich himself ran short of
horses, and, with pleasant effrontery, dispatched Hans
from the camp at Annis to Nancy — ^where Duke Eric

^ ^ Son of thje Elector Frederick II and commonly called ‘the
CondotHere oi the Reformation.’

CHAMPION OF HUGUENOTS 439

of Brunswick was celebrating his wedding with the
daughter of the Duke of Lorraine — ^to beg the bride-
groom for the gift of a charger. Duke Eric replied,
with scanty courtesy, that he was engaged with his
bride and wanted his horses for himself ; nor, had he
one to spare, would he bestow it upon a Lutheran
heretic. The Count of Salm, whom Hans was likewise
commanded to approach, replied, with even greater
vigour, that, as the Duke of Liegnitz was already
helping to plunder his home and his peasantry, the
request for the added gift of a horse appeared to him
unseasonable. Hans therefore returned empty-handed,
and the invaders, inflamed by his descriptions of the
luxury and ostentation of the wedding feasts, at once
revenged themselves by burning to the ground the
villages belonging to the ungracious count. ‘And
from this great evil,’ reflects Hans, ‘a kind word or
a horse might have saved him.’

The plundering of Lorraine quickly became the main
occupation of Johann Casimir’s army, for, hearing that
the Catholics were astir, the Palsgrave cast discretion
to the winds and allowed his troops to ransack the
province at their pleasure. Their progress left a wide
avenue of desolation in its wake.* Every morning,
when the troops quitted the lodgings in which they had
passed the night, they reduced them to flames, so that
each January dawn beheld at least ten or twelve
villages, ‘ all beautifully built,’ burning to the ground.

‘ And it was enough to make the heart weep,’ adds the
kindly equerry, ‘ for it was a goodly and well-fumished
land.’ In this grim fashion — skirting round Metz, for
fear of its mightiness,^ and being joined at Famy by
‘seventeen companies of foot-soldiers from Switzer-
land, which were decked and adorned to such a degree,

* Lippomano, who traversed the country soon after, wrote : ‘Every
two leagues are fine villages, utterly laid in ruins by the reiters.
(Tommaseo II.) ‘Passavano a guisa di spaventosa tempesta,’ says
Davila. {Istoria^

* It was but twenty-four years since Charles V. had been forced
to retire firom Metz, ‘wto tears running down his face.’

440 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

with their armour and harquebuses gilded, and their
weapons also mounted with silver, that it was verily a
thing to wonder at ’ — the little army arrived in France.

Meanwhile Hans’s private hopes and enjoyments
had been daily mounting, for Johann Casimir had
taken a great fancy to the young Silesian, and
had borrowed him from Duke Heinrich to be his own
personal attendant. Fifty crowns a month were now
given to him as wage, with twelve crowns and free
fodder for each of his three horses ; while, to crown
this generosity, the Palsgrave promised that he should
bear the news of their first victory to the aged Elector,
and thus be enabled to win for himself a stately
guerdon. ‘ Who now so happy as I ? ’ he exclaims,
‘ for my luck was surely in flower, and I thought by
this means to become a rich man.’ Closely attached
to the person of the Commander-in-Chief, he was also
privileged, after each muster of the 9,000 horse, to lead
the banners in the ring, and deliver them to the
ensign ; and, since the cavalry had to swear to the
standards while he was still in the ring, he was
exalted above all the other officers ; ‘ and I made
myself thereby a name, and gained much reputation,
which I considered great happiness, and would not
give up for money and wealth.’

But Hans’s blossoming time was soon over, for,
while as yet nothing had been accomplished save the
burning and plundering of the harmless Lorraine
villages,^ there came the alarming news that the King

* The spoils — ‘les bagues, les joyaux, les bufFetz, la vaisselle
d’argentj les chaisnes, et surtout les beaux escus au soleiP — were
u^ed to adorn Casimir’s triumph ‘ h la mode superbe ’ on his return to
Germany. ‘ Jusques 1^ encor . . . qu’en son tnumphe furent menez et
conduicts une infinite de boeufs qui avoient est6 pris en France,
caparaqonnez et accommodez ny plus ny moins qu’estoient ceux
desdictz Romains. ... II n’avoit pas eu grand peine k conquerir ces
bceufz, car ils estoient en proye k un chacun. Mais quoy ! il falloit
ainsi conduire ce triumphe : autrement, pensez qu'il fust este imparfaict
et point esgal aux Romains anciens. Si est-ce que ny de luy ny des
siens pour ceste fois n’y eut de trop grands coups ruez ; mais voyli 1
telle fut son ambition de triumpher, aussi bien k faux que pour
le vray,’ (Brantdme.)

A DROP FROM THE ZENITH 441

of France was advancing eastwards with 80,000 men.
The Duke of Liegnitz was thereupon appointed to the
command of a visionary rearguard of 3,000 horse and
4,000 foot, to be hastily collected by him in Germany ;
and nothing now would satisfy His Grace but that the
equerry should return to his right allegiance. This,
though with infinite regrets, took place. ‘ So fled once
more my hoped-for fortune.’ Once more did Hans
drop from wealth to penury, and. once more was his
face turned homewards.

Sadly, and not without fear of reprisals from the
angry peasantry, the tiny party retraced their steps
through the devastated landscape, leaving their more
fortunate comrades to pursue their triumphant course.
And, to relieve his feelings, Hans could but jump
the gaping chasm in the bridge over the Rhine at
Strasburg: ‘With a good drink within and a good
horse under me, I heaved forward, and if the horse
had fallen I had plunged thirty ells deep into the
Rhine. But God helped me over, and I hit the toll-
keeper with my piece about the head, and rode
away.’

Ill

And now once more begins the borrowing, indiscrimi-
nate and undismayed. The collecting of the rear-
guard required money; the upkeep also of His Grace
of Liegnitz required money. The first painful duty
of Hans’s return to office had been to sell two of his
much-prized chargers for eighty thalers, in order to
lend the fruits of the sale to his master. ‘ And never
in all my days have I got them back again.’

Nor was it long before his golden tongue was once
more in requisition. The old Elector of Heidelberg,
the Landgrave George of Hesse, Count John of Nassau,
the Town Council of Frankfort, and many others
were visited, Hans begging industriously of them all.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

442

and winning their hearts by his remarkable powers
‘ im Trunke und Gerausch.’ But as to money all were
obdurate: ‘schlugen ganzlich ab.’ Even a wedding
was prayed in vain to contribute, which indeed in the
end proved a sore expense, for the Duke must needs
present the bride with a golden ship, for which he
gave eighty thalers, borrowed from a jeweller, poor
Hans being, as usual, the unwilling surety. Some of
the more generous hosts consented to lend twenty or
fifty, or even a hundred crowns, ‘ in order to be rid of
us ’ ; but, when the party finally arrived at Cologne, ‘ I
can say with certainty that His Princely Grace had not
more than one and a half thalers in his purse, and that
with two nights’ lodging yet unpaid ; so that the very
sergeants who carried the baggage from the ships to
the inn could not be rewarded.’ Hans was therefore
forced again to the rescue, with his father’s parting
gift of a gold chain, and a small store of journey money,
which had been secretly sewn into the flap of his
breeches.

Such insignificant details, however, were as nothing
to Duke Heinrich, and he preserved his customary
imperturbability of extravagance. Having made a
noble entry into the city 'with great splendour and
eight trumpeters blowing unceasingly in the ships,’ he
proceeded with the thirty-two horses and forty-five
men of his retinue to the principal hostelry. The land-
lord, greatly impressed by the multitudinous pomp of
the party, gave lodgings and credit without demur ; so
here they took up their abode, existing magnificently,
and entertaining innumerable guests. Hans, indeed,
remonstrated with his master with unflagging vigour.
But his appeals passed unheeded. ' In a day or two,
when I am known,’ said His Grace confidently, 'I
shall surely get money ’ ; and so for a fortnight he
pursued his improvident way.

Money, however, was not so quickly forthcoming.
The Town Council — all dressed in scarlet and white —
was duly exhorted by Hans in a lengthy and ingenious

A FURTHER DROP 443

speech, but its members, albeit they had themselves
abundantly enjoyed the ducal hospitality, to a man
‘schlugen gSnzlich ab.’ The merchants also were
approached, and all the neighbouring nobles ; but with
one accord they made excuse. ‘ Paper was sent, paper
came back, but never gold.’ And worse, the suspicions
of their host were at last aroused, and he was soon
demanding, in no uncertain terms, the immediate pay-
ment of his already gigantic bill. Here was a crisis
with which even the resourceful equerry was unable
to cope. In vain did he parley with the creditors, and
allude to the large sums hourly expected from France
and Silesia. The innkeeper was Spanish and impatient,
and would by no means wait. To the Electoral courts
of justice rather would he and did he go, procuring an
embargo on all the Duke’s horses and chattels for so
long as the many thousand thalers owing to him
remained unpaid.

Early one morning, therefore, a person all dressed in
red and white, with a long red-coloured wand in his
hand, appeared in (the inn and took possession : ‘ and
His Grace and I had great fear.’ Nor, indeed, were their
tremors without foundation, since at the same time
there arrived from Liegnitz the terrible news that the
Imperial Commission had accomplished its unworthy
task, and that the Duke’s brother, having been appointed
reigning prince by the Emperor, had assumed the duties
and emoluments of government under the title of
Friedrich IV. 'Had thus double pains,’ groans the
poor equerry, ‘grasped at much and great, and attained
little and nothing.’

So the game began again with renewed vigour, and
Hans started forth once more a-borrowing. His first
visit was to the Elector-Archbishop of Cologne, in the
hope that the decision of the courts might be set aside.
This prince of the church was a jolly fellow, friendly,
and a stark drinker,^ so host and guests were ‘ lustig

^ Gebhardt IL Some six years later he was deprived of his see for
marrying the nun Agnes von Mansfeid.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

444

und guter Dinge’ together. But before Hans could
obtain more than vague promises of assistance, the
Archbishop unfortunately ‘ lost himself with a lovely
lady in a tent.’ ‘ Methought this was no longer the
place for me,’ says Hans modestly, and sadly back he
went He was next dispatched all the way to Utrecht,
to procure money on loan from a rich merchant But
ag ain success was snatched from him at the last
moment, for, on the very night before the final arrange-
ments were to be concluded, the Spanish army arrived
untimely upon the scene. Having taken possession of
the castle, the enemy riddled the town with shot, ‘ and
the balls flew through the roofs of the city, so that
sore trouble and need fell upon it.’ The citizens and
merchants were transfixed with terror, and had now
no thought save for their personal safety. ‘ And thus
were all my plans and bargainings set at naught, and
I thanked God that I and Zacharias Koller escaped
unharmed by the river that ran through the town ; for
grievous distress was abroad.’

Meanwhile the Duke had himself gallantly, though
unsuccessfully, been foraging in various directions :
‘for when cats have no more to eat they learn to
mouse,’ reflects Hans, ‘ and it is well said. Cats, catch
your own mice.’ The result, however, was nil, and
all too soon did Heinrich come bootless home and
weather-beaten back. With growing anxiety, he
racked his brain for plans, and at length alighted on
the brilliant idea of courting Elizabeth of England.
‘ Wanted to send me also to England, where I, in the
stead of His Grace, should woo the Queen to marry him,
and at the same time ask her to lend him fifty thousand
crowns. Now I would gladly have gone to England,
but as to such wooings and beggings of the Queen I
had many scruples. Wherefore I asked His Grace
how he had fallen upon such a folly ; seeing that he
had already a consort, which the Queen well knew,
what was he meaning to do ? This speech did not
greatly please His Grace, and he said to me ; “You axe

COMPENSATIONS 445

a fool ; did not the Landgrave (Philip of Hesse) have
two wives? Hans replied sarcastically that he had
never heard the Duchess complain, as the Landgravine
had done, of excessive attentions on the part of her
spouse, and that an ambassador’s hat would be of little
use to himself should he break his head in the earning
of it.^ ‘ Whereat His Princely Grace was angry, and
sulked for two days with me.’

All other plans proving equally cloudy, there was
no help for it but to remain in Cologne until such
time as the subsidies for Heinrich’s invaluable assist-
ance to the Calvinist cause should arrive. Both
master and man, therefore, put a brave face on the
matter and proceeded to make themselves ‘ very well
known in the town.’ Every day, and often twice a
day, they perambulated the cathedral, in the hope
of meeting with friends or acquaintances; for here
gathered all the visitors from all the country round.
Nor did Hans waste his opportunities, since he quickly
gained a footing in sundry rich houses, where the
daughters gladly bestowed upon him costly gifts in
default of the warmer favours that he was too cautious
to accept. ‘ For I was cock of the basket {Hahn im
Korbe),' he writes on one occasion, ‘ as she gave me
well to understand.’ His honesty, however, did not
desert him, for although this lady, a wealthy heiress,
often cast gold chains of price about his neck, and
although he was informed that he might certainly
keep them, yet he invariably gave them back. ‘ And
why I did this I have no idea,’ he confesses; ‘but
I thank God that He preserved me from all evil.’
These scruples, it must be added, did not prevent
him, some months later, from borrowing thirty florins

' Hans seems to have shared the English poet’s impression of
Elizabeth :

‘ A wiser Queen, never was to be seen
For a woman or yet a stouter ;

For if anie thing vext her, with that which came next her
O, How shee would lay about her ! ’

{Ballads from MSS. II.)

446 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

from the affectionate damsel. But even then he amply
repaid her, for when ‘ her mother presented them to
me,’ he writes, ‘ I caressed the daughter all the better.’

Not all the adventures, however, ended so blame-
lessly, for, as in Augsburg, His Grace not infre-
quently insisted on sharing Hans’s invitations, and
the ducal conscience was by no means so tender
as that of the equerry. Thus at the very beginning
of their sojourn, ‘ while we were still in flora', Hans was
granted daily hospitality in the Nunnery of St. Mary,i
the abode of many ladies of rank. The Duke was, of
course, instantly seized with the desire to obtain a like
privilege, and, unable to think of any better method,
ordered Hans to inform the Abbess that he would one
evening bring a maskery to the cloister for the di-
version of herself and the maidens. The Abbess was
charmed, and appointed a day for the purpose;
and Heinrich, triumphant, busied himself with the
preparation of the dresses — Italian for the men and
Spanish for the ladies. ‘So when the said evening
came, His Princely Grace and all of us clad our-
selves in the mumming-clothes ; and we were three
men and three women, and had with us a lovely
musica and rode on fine horses to the cloister; and
each had a Spanish damsel behind him.’ Hans’s
pillion partner was no other than Duke Heinrich
himself, with his portly figure disguised in the
trappings of a Spanish beauty, and the equerry’s
loyalty was unable to resist the perpetration of a
small jest. ‘For as I and the said damsel arrived in
the courtyard, where the Lady Abbess and all her
assemblage were standing to receive us, I caused

' ‘ On a hill called the Capitol is a Church of Our Lady, where is a
nunnery with many canonesses. They say their oflSces publicly in
the choir, eat in common, and sleep in the convent ; in the daytime
they go out at their pleasure, two and two together, and have attend-
ants and live nobly, and can marry legitimately if they choose.’
(Beads.) _ Bizoni was shocked to observe that these ‘ canonesses ’
officiated in the same vestments as the canons : long black robes, with
furs and great collars & fi-aise. They resuihed their feminine garb at
the end of the office.

COMPENSATIONS 447

the horse to make a bound forward, and he threw
that Spanish maid— esf, the Duke— who sat behind
me, with all her glories into a puddle; so that His
Grace was like a mud-plaster, and we had to go back
again into a house and wash up His Grace.’ The
mischief, however, was quickly repaired, and the
company was soon enjoying itself greatly, being
‘ lusiig und guter Dinge with the nuns, and dancing
and drinking much.’ And after this episode the
Silesian visitors became so welcome and ‘ so intimate ’
in the nunnery that certain consequences ensued, to
which even Hans can but lightly allude. ‘ Genug von
dem, jedoch mich entschuldiget genommen.’ *

These days in Cologne, therefore, passed quickly
enough, and the Duke and his equerry were ‘ not
unhappy.’ They visited greatly and flirted greatly,
and drank and danced, and pawned their clothes, and
so were ‘ merry and of good cheer.’ Nor even was
their gay equanimity in any degree impaired by a
serious danger that was soon threatening them. A
terrible pestilence broke out in the city, and not only
had every house its corpse, but in their own inn no
less than ten persons died. ‘ But I did not ask much
about it,’ writes Hans, with an admirable confidence,
‘and was never alarmed, but commended myself to
God ; for it was my opinion that it was impossible
that I should die.’ His sole precaution was to take
every day, on rising, ‘ a grape-vinegar, with somewhat
to eat thereby, and soon after a good fair drink.’ *
And verily, he adds, God protected him and his lord’s
company so well, that not one single person perished.
Once only did his faith fail him, and it must be admitted
that his excuse was good ; for his room-mate, having

* Yet the laws of Cologne were exceedingly severe. Bizoni
saw in the Church of Our Lady, to which this nunnery was attached,
two square blocks of marble measuring a palm and a hs^ each way,
and joined together by an iron bar a span long. With this con-
trivance about their necks, the culprits were driven about the city.

* Bassompierre, after his search for the beautiful washer-girl in the
plague-stricken house, drank ‘ trois ou quattre verres de vin pur, quy
est un rdmMe d’AUemaigne centre la peste prdsente.’ {Journal^

448 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

selected a churchyard as a convenient place for a fond
interview, fell in the darkness, together with his lady-
love, headlong into an open grave, new-filled with
victims of the plague. Fortunately for him, though
unfortunately for Hans, the monks had left a ladder,
whereby the couple dolefully climbed out, and the
lover, with emotions damped, then repaired to Hans’s
apartment, and, sans word of his adventure, took his
usual share of the bed. In the morning, when the
truth was revealed, Hans was both incensed and
alarmed, the more that he was seized with sudden
illness and unable to stand. He soon recovered, but
his friendship with Barleben was at an end ; ‘ for he
had easily made an end of me, had not God graciously
given me protection.’

If Hans was specially secured from the pestilence,
he was not so pleasantly guarded from the vagaries of
his master, and the relations between the two became
a little strained. Not content, indeed, with bleeding
his equerry of all his actual possessions, the Duke had
surpassed the bounds of even his own customary
unscrupulous acquisitiveness. A certain Christoph
Braun, captain of landsknechts, offered to lend His
Grace i,6oo gold pieces on Hans’s signed and
sealed bond, but this the young Silesian, reluctant to
entangle his father in so doubtful a transaction, stead-
fastly declined to give. Duke Heinrich, therefore,
secretly sent to the stone-cutter, and caused the
Schweinichen arms to be engraved on copper, with
which, still secretly, he sealed the document. Having
obtained — and spent — the money from Braun, he now
confessed the matter to his victim, making many
golden promises as to the future, and pointing out
what a scandal would arise should the transaction
not be completed by a signature. ‘ And although I
had wholly refused the signing, I saw well what
would be the end of it, and that His Grace would come
to great contumely thereby. So when His Grace
begged me, with praying hands, not to deny him,

TRIUMPHANT EXODUS 449

I wrote my name; but I told Braun clearly, in the
presence of His Grace, that it was not in my power to
hold by it.’

The time having at length arrived for the payment
of the French salary, Hans was sent post-haste to
Frankfort to receive it. But he returned shortly
with the dismal intelligence that peace had been
proclaimed, and with, in consequence, but half the
expected contribution. This was an unlooked-for
blow, and even the Duke was ‘ terror-stricken,’ for he
was now without any source of income soever, while his
debts, new and old, had grown to the noble sum of
485,466 thalers. The salary, however, such as it was,
increased by the sale of various jewels, enabled the
little company to sail away once more in triumph
from Cologne, with six trumpets and a kettledrum,
and fifty-four horses, as fat as butter. All the debtors
were satisfied, with the exception of the unhappy
Spanish landlord, who not only had to give up the
horses which he had been compelled to feed all these
weeks at his own expense, but was also forced to provide
the equivalent in money for certain costly garments,
said to have been left as pledges in his hands, but
in reality existing only in Hans’s imagination. ‘ So I
played a trick on our host,’ exults the equerry shame-
lessly, ‘ to pay him for what he had done to us.’
The horses, which, during eighteen weeks had not
once been turned round in their stalls, could not
move when they were taken out, though they were
‘fine and fat.’ And His Grace had to stay ten days
longer, till the horses had again ‘ learned how to go :
for at first they moved like drunken men.’ When, by
dint of hourly exercise in the river, this had been
done, the procession took its way through the streets ;
and thus, after a sojourn of seven months, the Duke
of Liegnitz departed from Cologne ‘ with dimity, a
praiseworthy name and a brave appearance,’ it being
apparent to all men that ‘the honour was now as
great as had been the shame of the arrest,

450 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

On the first night after their triumphant exodus,
Hans and his master lay in the monastery of Brau-
weiler, hoping to replenish their dwindling store from
the monastic purse. Strange to say, however, the
Lord Abbot ‘ did not approve ’ of His Grace : ‘ schlug
ganzlich ab.’ And now, for the hundredth time, begins
the weary round of begging visits, lightened only by
some evanescent ‘ sweetheartings ’ and incomparable
feats of drink and dance, which gave Hans ‘much
strength of heart.’ He urged his master to return
home to Silesia, but this time it was the Duke who
‘ schlug ganzlich ab,’ preferring rather to take lodgings
for the winter at the little town of Emmerich. The
equerry was therefore sent to choose them, and spent
several weeks, not unpleasantly, in doing so.

As a fact, he slipped back more than once to see his
old friends in Cologne, and there, he declares, he was
happier than ever before, and was invited out to every
meal. Indeed, he was so beloved by his landlady, to
whom he had ‘ spoken good words,’ that neither she
nor her husband would accept a farthing for his keep.
On one of these visits he was even entertained by a
canon of the cathedral, who was surrounded by comely
women ; ‘ but these were not hard enough,’ complains
the guest mysteriously, ‘ being such as are always to
be found among clerics.’ On another occasion he saw
one of his many ‘ all-belovedests,’ the charming
daughter of a certain Herr von Bielandt; and a
pathetic note is struck by his account of the meeting.
‘I rejoiced in her lovingness,’ he writes, ‘for as she
had been in the beginning, so did she remain.’ He
also visited an old acquaintance at Hunersbach, and as
he ‘ held it a shame ’ that when one nobleman invited
another to his house they should too soon be parted,
he ‘ kept to the custom,’ and lay there fourteen days,
riding daily to the chase. ‘ Especially is there good
coney-catching there. They have little dogs to bite
them out of their holes, and also small greyhounds,
which are quite common. We often caught twenty

OLD MAIDS AND A GHOST 451

and more^ And since the womankind were also
pretty, I felt all the better; for I was entertained as
though 1 were a great lord.’

Hans’s holiday, however, was soon over, and he was
recalled by his master, to be raised most unwillingly
to the dignified but onerous post of Steward of the
Household : ‘ Although 1 strove hard not to take the
post, yet I must obey, and so had, to my disgust, the
arrangement and government of the whole retinue
hanging on my neck. Thus even in my youth I drew
no light cares upon myself.’ His Grace had at the time
seven gentlemen in waiting, not counting the other
officers, and about twenty-three horses; and there
were forty-seven persons to be fed daily, which, with
a purse unremittingly empty, must no doubt have
been difficult.

The impecunious prince now settled down in
Emmerich, nominally for the winter. He had actually
obtained a little money from the aged Elector Palatine,
and Hans’s horizon, thanks to the benignant offices
of two old maids and a ghost, looked momentarily
brighter. The two spinsters were the hostesses of
the party, and, to the steward’s relief, exceptionally
reasonable. But the ghost was the real success of the
enterprise. Two days before the arrival of the ducal
party, the ‘ spirit or monster,’ as Hans calls it, had
appeared upon the scene, washed all the rooms clean,
arranged the whole house, and itself made all the beds.
On the third night after their instalment it visited the
steward’s truckle-couch, and, with a club or bauble, ‘such
as fools are wont to have,’ guarded his head from the
flies. Hans, chancing to awake, beheld it, and, being
unaccustomed to such attentions, was ‘ sorely terrified,

> Schaschek and Tetzel, when traversing this district, had noticed
the abundance of rabbits and the method (apparently untaown to the
though dating at least from the days of Pliny) of catdimg
them with ferrets and nets : ‘The ferret dnves the coney forth with
bites, and the hunter, having spread nets about the hole, captoes
him as he issues therefrom. The inhabitants affir m that in one day
500 or 600 conies may tiius be taken.

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

452

and wished to scream.’ ^ As, however, he feared to
waken the Duke, he commended himself instead to
Providence, whereupon ‘ the monster ’ retired into
a comer and laughed. On the following night Hans
fortified himself with a carouse and slept, so the ghost
turned his attention to his bed-fellow, who screamed
aloud, ‘ O help me, thou dear holy Mary ! ’ The
steward still pretended to sleep, but the apparition
now came round to his side of the bed, laughed aloud,
and vanished. This annoyed Hans, and when day-
light came he requested the two old ladies ‘ to dis-
charge the ghost, lest harm should come to it.’ They,
however, were so overjoyed at its appearance, and
congratulated him so warmly on its personal devotion
to himself and on the good luck which this entailed,
that he grew reconciled to his visitor. Now therefore,
for a space, prosperity reigned in the household. ‘ His
Grace and all of us had good luck and well-being, and
suffered no adversities, nor was I any longer afraid.’
If the cook in the kitchen left his saucepans and dishes
unwashed, in the morning they were cleansed and
burnished ‘in the loveliest fashion.’® The ghost be-
came, indeed, so popular that the retinue, doing as they
would be done by, urged Hans to give it to drink:
‘ the which I accordingly did, and I commonly placed
for it on a bench some milk or beer mixed with honey
and sugar ; this it would approach and take according
to opportunity, and it would nod at me with its head,

^ In his chapter ‘ Of standynge up of a mans heare,’ Boorde remarks
that this malady ‘ may come by a folyshe feare, when a man is by
hym selfe alone^ and is a frayde of his owne shadow, or of a spirite.
O, what saye I ? I shulde have sayde, afrayde of the spirite of the
buttry, which be perylous beastes ; for suche spirites doth trouble a
man so sore that he can not dyvers times stande vpon his legges.^
{JBrevyary,) Cot^rave also expounds ‘ Yvre ’ as meaning one ‘ that
hath seene the divell.’ But Hans's ghost was, we may hope, of too
long standing for any ungracious explanation of this kind,

* I have heard say, writes Jean d' Arras (who had it from ‘a man
worshipfull and of credence,’ who himself had it from ‘a firend
auncyent and old '), that there are some ‘ fauntasyes ' that appear by
nigjit ‘in lyknes of wymen with old face, of low and lytil stature or
body/ which scour pans and pots and do such things ‘ as a mayde or
servaunt oughte to doo, lyberaly and without doo3mg of ony harme.'

HOLLOW COFFERS 453

and when I lay in bed drink to me. And this I saw
many times.’ Unfortunately, this gentle monster was
only too soon exorcised. For on one fatal night the
Duke calledl for lemonade, and Hans, climbing the
narrow spiral staircase to summon one of the pages,
met the ghost face to face. ‘ And now I was power-
fully alarmed, and knew not what or how I should do.
But I went on until I touched it, when it began to
laugh and said, “ Thou knowest not thy good fortune :
now shalt thou see how it goes with thee.” ’ It never
showed itself again, and with it went the fleeting luck
of the exiles of Liegnitz.

For the disappearance of the ghost coincided with
the disappearance of the small sum of electoral money
that had lately smoothed the steward’s thorny path.
Costly banquets to the citizens of Emmerich, brilliant
with Silesian dishes and innumerable lights ‘as is
customary in the Netherlands,’ had quickly exhausted
the slender store, and their coffers were once more
sounding with hollow poverty and emptiness. The
sale of jewels, borrowed by Hans from a jeweller
of Cleves, prolonged the agony for a few days
only. His Grace grew prodigal of the wildest plots.
One day he rode off to the Spanish encampment,
distant some four days’ journey from Emmerich, in
the hope of discovering a lucrative appointment
For a second time he was disguised as lackey to
Hans, who himself would pass for a wandering
soldier, seeking for employment ‘ And the Duke had
to look after the horses, wait upon me, clean the
boots, and attend to everything, as befits a servant’
But they were recognised by an affectionate and unfor-
tunately reminiscent maid-servant, and were forced
to return in haste, for had they been revealed to the
authorities, ‘ so should I have had no other shrift than
to have been hanged to a tree, and the Duke to have
remained in lifelong imprisonment’ Another day
His Grace gave a banquet to the captain who had
charge of the Spanish stronghold at Heerenberg, near

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

454

Emmerich, intending secretly to take possession of the
castle, and therewith presumably of a useful booty,
in his absence. But the Silesians drank as hard as
the Spaniards, and, ‘ since all were full, the matter was
at a standstill, and the plans fell through once more,
and all the Duke’s wine was drunk up for nothing ; and
the proverb is right that says, “ Plans are good, when
they come off.” ’

Matters thus fell from bad to worse, and the year
1577 opened gloomily. At length, the lack of money
having become too urgent to be borne. His Grace
chartered a secret ship and departed suddenly, like a
thief, in the night. On January 4, Hans, who had
overslept himself, awoke to find only the retinue,
clamouring raucous as a nest of young rooks, and
this note ; ‘ Dear Hans, here hast thou this chain';
do with it what thou canst. I will make all speed
and return to-day or to-morrow. Ponder well and
see if thou canst sell the horses for ready money. I
will not lay my head softly, but will with God’s help
bring money, that we may get away from these people
and this stiff-necked country. Herewith a good-
morrow to thee, heart-dear Hans. — Heinrich, Duke.
Manu pp’

Needless to say, the Duke did not reappear in two
days or in twenty, and the wretched steward was
reduced to desperation, knowing not whither to turn.
The tradesmen clamoured for payment, and for even
the meanest necessaries he had to depend on the
charity of his two old landladies ; while the people
were so embittered that ‘ had I gone through the
town they would have followed, and, catching me
alone, quickly beaten me.’ Nor were his troubles
materially lightened by the exploit of one of his Sile-
sians, Martin Seidenberg, who donned a mask, painted
his horse black, fell upon a rich Jew in a wood, and
escaped with a sackful of treasure. Having washed
the horse white again, the rogue then gaily assisted
the Jew in his vain search for the malefactor, and

DESERTED 455

eventually brought the money in triumph to Hans.
The steward, horrified, refused to take it, though the
necessity of his rags compelled him at last to accept
a gift of twenty thalers. So Martin decamped to
rejoin his less scrupulous master, while Hans re-
mained ‘ to build up misery and cling to grief.’ The
young knight’s standard of honesty did not, however,
deter him from selling two blind horses for a goodly
sum to a Netherlandish nobleman. This worthy
having thereafter fallen — servants, horses, and all — into
a lime-pit, discovered the infirmities of his bargain
and returned to complain, but Hans justly observed
that he should have kept his own eyes open. ‘ So he
was left with the blind horses, and I with the money.’

Hans’s sole comfort and diversion now lay, indeed,
in the affection of the two old maids, who proved his
unfaltering consolers, and did all in their power to
lighten his woes. Not only did they feed him and
four of his comrades for nothing, but they frequently
lent him money, treated him with all kindness and
respect, and were, in brief, ‘ my great friends.’ They
even contrived a banquet for his delectation, and
appointed him to the place of honour. For, ‘on the
day of the Holy Three Kings,’ he tells, ‘ it is the custom
in nearly all houses to make a king’s feast, when it is
chosen who shall be King and who shall have the
other offices. And I, in jest, was to be the King and
one of the spinsters Queen. And the Queen made a
banquet and invited the King as guest, and with dances
and the like we were joyful and of good cheer.’ The
Queen also presented him with a golden chain worth
one hundred crowns to wear for her sake. But,
although he hung it round his neck for the one night,
on the morrow he firmly returned it, not, as we might
hope, from scruples of courtesy or kindness, but —
and the confession alone wins our forgiveness — from
a curious and ungenerous fear lest the old lady should
bewitch him. ‘ And I had almost to force her to take
it back. And I was a fool that I did not keep it.’

456 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Finally the crisis was reached, and the courts of
justice ordered all the ducal horses and chattels to be
sold and Hans himself to be put into prison. Seeing,
therefore, that for six weeks he had received no news
of the Duke, nor hoped for any, and that, to crown the
disaster, Christoph Braun, the enraged creditor from
Cologne, also threatened execution, Hans decided to
follow his master’s example. On February 22 he
decamped secretly from the place on foot, leaving
the whole retinue in the charge of the groom of the
chambers ; and he returned, as fast as his penniless
condition allowed, to Silesia.

Here, then, was the wanderer at home once more.

But, even in Liegnitz, Hans found matters scarcely
more gay. His master’s brother, Duke Friedrich, was
in possession and unfriendly, while the news of his
own father’s death had reached him but a few days
before his arrival. Moreover, thanks to the incessant
drainage which all Duke Heinrich’s subjects had
undergone for the pleasure of his princely maintenance,
the elder Schweinichen had left his affairs in a
condition almost of bankruptcy ; and his sons now suc-
ceeded to a property devastated by debt. Indeed, the
only crumb of comfort in the poor steward’s sour loaf
was that his master was still wandering at large
throughout the Empire, and that his purse, empty as
it was, might still, therefore, for a moment be called
his own.

Hans’s respite, however, was but brief. A few days
after his return he was sent for by Duke Friedrich
and closely questioned both as to the reasons of his
home-coming and as to the movements and intentions
©f Duke Heinrich. Seeing no reason why 'the
usurper’ should be enlightened on either of these

GLOOM AT LIEGNITZ 457

points, Hans fed him with the grossest lies. He had
left his master in the Netherlands, he declared;
had no idea when he would return or how m an y
thousands strong; but he was now on the best of
terms with all the electors and princes of the Empire,

‘ had in them great friends.’ As for himself, he had
been recalled by the death of his father. Duke
Friedrich took this answer ‘ very badly,’ and advised
the inventive steward to return home and cultivate
loyalty to his lawful sovereign, lest worse should
come of it.

Soon after this the new Emperor, Rudolph II.,
arrived in Breslau to receive the homage of his
Silesian subjects, and Hans received a command from
Duke Heinrich to go there in his stead and to lay his
master’s obedience and grievances at the Imperial
feet. This Hans accordingly did, obtaining an audience
from Rudolph himself, and detailing, so far as his
most sketchy instructions permitted, the situation and
desires of his lord. The answer was on the whole
gracious, but the Duke was rebuked for his absence on
so important an occasion, and admonished to attend
without delay the famous Imperial Commission, which
was, as usual, about to regulate the Liegnitz affairs.
Schweinichen, therefore, dutifully and unselfishly
urged his master to return, and received in reply
instructions to proceed to Crossen immediately, with a
suitable retinue, to escort the prodigal home. This
command also Hans obeyed, preparing for the occasion
with great honour and expense. Heinrich, however,
never appeared, and after eight days of costly ex-
pectation Hans returned angrily home. ‘ And by the
said waiting I earned little thanks from Duke Friedrich,
and caused myself great annoyance ; for Duke
Friedrich and the Councillors were against me, and if
they were able to vex me, they let not the occasion
pass. But God helped me out of all and guarded me,
that I never fell into their claws ; but I had always to
go a little delicately.’

458 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

After this, summons followed summons, ordering
Hans to meet his master at various places on his way
back to the duchy ; but, since ‘ the burnt one dreads
the fire,’ the steward now firmly disregarded them
all. At last the Duke wrote severely, commanding
him, if he would not come himself, at least to send his
three horses. Whereupon Hans retorted that one of
these was already dead from the vain expectation at
Crossen, while the others were too feeble from want of
food to be able to travel. On receipt, however, of a
penitent and affectionate letter from His Grace, he
finally started forth once more to meet him, with
thirty-seven horses and a dignified retinue, all with
yellow feathers in their hats.

The meeting was to be near GSrlitz, and here the
escort, in trembling uncertainty, awaited him. Nor was
it till three days beyond the appointed hour had passed
that the Duke’s approach was actually announced;
while, when at length he condescended to appear, the
first words that fell from the august lips were ; ‘ Now
that you have me again, what will you give me ? ’

Fortunately, an estimable Councillor of GSrlitz
made a handsome offering of wine and provender,
so that they were able to celebrate the event with
generous abandonment, ‘every man having on this
joyful occasion a good carouse.’ The next morning,
however, the innkeeper had to be paid, and it appeared
that they had already expended no less than 284
thalers.^ Hans took the reckoning to the Duke for
payment ; but His Grace laughed and said : ‘ Dear
Hans, you have brought me here : if you want to keep
me you must pay for me, for I have no more money.’
And Hans’s unfortunate friends and relatives had to
raise funds for the occasion.

* ‘They spend prodigally m drincke, wherein sometymes I have
seene one gentleman at one night’s lodging in his Inn spend tenn or
twenty DoUors. Yet howsoever poore men will drincke theire apparell
from theire backes, I should thincke it a labour of Hercules for
men of the better sorte to consume any reasonable patrimony
therein.’ (Shake^ear^s Europe.)

THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN 459

On his arrival at Liegnitz Heinrich took up his
abode with one Hans Heilmann, and, undaunted by
his peculiar position, settled down to enjoy himself
after his usual fashion. One of his first visitors was
the Duchess, whom he had not seen for two years and
a half ; and Hans was again forced to act as mediator
between the prince and his embarrassingly affectionate
spouse. The steward’s exertions, indeed, were not
at first crowned with success, despite the gallant
assistance of the lady herself, who, having already
been once politely ejected from her husband’s apart-
ments, returned to the charge in a masquerade, with
many lights and a musica: ‘And when His Grace
was aware of her coming he ran to his room, locked
the door behind him, and would let no one in.' Later,
however, the Duchess melted her husband’s stony
heart with the gift of a valuable chain, and thence-
forward was allowed to come daily down from the
Castle to visit him. The two young princesses were
still living with their uncle at Thesingen, and,
although Hans was sent with a gilded carnage drawn
by six horses to bring them back to the arms of their
impatient father, the Margrave, who had not yet
forgotten ‘ the Kittlitzin business,’ would not consent
to give them up.

As to the usurper of Liegnitz, Duke Heinrich
entirely declined to see him, although Friedrich had
ridden out promptly and pacifically to have speech of
his peccant brother. ‘ Sent word,’ writes Hans regret-
fully, ‘ that he was just then in his bath, and excused
himself from hearing Duke Friedrich, whence Duke
Friedrich returned, more in sadness than in joy, to the
Castle.’ Nor was Duke Heinrich any better disposed
to all the courtiers and officials who had abandoned
his service for that of his brother. In fact, two of the
ducal councillors excited his anger to such a pitch
that on one occasion Hans, returning from a ride,
found His Grace’s trumpeters and kettle-drummers
preparing ’ to blazon them forth as rogues to all four

460 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

quarters of the compass.’ When the steward pointed
out the folly of this proceeding, his lord was ‘ very
ill content, raged indeed to the utmost, announcing
that he had made me master of his household but not
of himself, and that as he had ordered it so must
it be.’ Hans — ‘blustering also a little myself’ —
threatened to retire from his service, and the Duke,
though swearing that Hans’s arrival at that moment
must have been arranged by the devil himself, at
length consented to postpone the business to another
time.

Meanwhile Imperial Majesty had issued a command
that, pending the assembly of the proposed commission,
Duke Heinrich was to live frugally on his estates at
Hainan, being supported by an allowance of food and
necessaries from his brother Friedrich. So the move
took place, giving Hans ‘ no little trouble and care.’
But, as the allowance only arrived in the most de-
sultory fashion and as, whenever possible, Duke
Friedrich’s servants stole away even the produce
of the Hainan flour-mills, upon which the steward
depended for the sustenance of his little company, his
burdens were by no means lightened by the change.
Soon, too, the prince again grew restless, and numer-
ous journeys and borrowings were the result, during
which time the entire responsibility fell upon Hans.
‘ His Grace travelled up and down the country, but left
the household to me, to find food and drink for them
as best I could.’ To add to his embarrassments, his
persistent creditor, Christoph Braun, also appeared
upon the scene, and by his account of the transaction
at Cologne, ' did me great harm in the land of
Silesia, all which for my lord’s sake I had to bear.’
Nor were his private affairs in any more satisfactory
condition, for his constant occupations at the Court
necessitated the neglect of his own property, and he
now learned, he* bitterly declares, ‘what it means to
depend upon brothers.’

At length Duke Heinrich, having also, it appears,

BROTHERLY LOVE 461

learned this salutary lesson, decided to have the matter
out with Duke Friedrich. An interview was ac-
cordingly arranged in an open field, to which the elder
brother repaired with characteristic gaiety and con-
fidence, and the younger with characteristic gloom
and distrust. The two princes walked up and down
for two hours, deep in an argument which Hans
was not privileged to overhear. But when at last
they separated the steward caught these ominous
words from his master: ‘Brother, you will repent.
The time may come when I shall speak to you no
more thus brotherly. So think well, my dear prince,
and have no part with those who have betrayed me.'
Duke Friedrich was silent, and, though Heinrich
then amiably invited him to breakfast, would utter no
word : ‘ and the two lords parted more in hate (though
secret) than in love.’ Friedrich, adds Hans, had
worn armour under his doublet, and had twenty horse-
men in ambush. ‘ Had Duke Heinrich but known
thereof, no good would have come of it’

Matters were advanced no further by this meeting,
and it was impossible to keep house any longer at
Hainan ; so Duke Heinrich wrote to the Emperor,
announcing that, as Duke Friedrich never gave him
the stipulated allowance, he should thenceforward
take it where he could. To this there came no answer.
Nor, indeed, could any have come of practical use:
‘ By neither side could Imperial Majesty’s command
have been obeyed, seeing that if the one prince broke
pots, the other broke pipkins.’

And now the Duke hatched a plot of new and noble
proportions. For, having become aware that the
ducal bailiffs had laid up a great provision of com on
the GrOditzberg, he determined to take possession of
this Castle and keep house there till the Imperial
decision was made known. Hans, as usual, re-
monstrated with him, pointing out that the Emperor
would assuredly regard such an act as a trespass and
an outrage, so that his affairs would be the worse and

462 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

not the better. ‘ And because I discoursed somewhat
to His Grace on this matter, he was ill content with
me, said I knew nothing about such things.’ The
business was quickly put in hand, Hans being com-
manded to have twelve mounted horsemen made
ready to ride with their lord. He himself was to
remain at Hainan until summoned; but the Duke
promised that, if he succeeded in entering the Castle
during the night, he would quickly send back a
mounted messenger, who would prove his genuine-
ness by firing a shot, and would then give the steward
his further instructions. ‘ And so His Grace departed
from Hainan on August i8 (1578) at two o’clock for
the GrOditzberg.’

The achievement presented no great difficulties.
When the little company reached the wood at the foot
of the hill, the Duke sent up two horsemen, as though
to inspect the house, with orders to find out who was
there and, if the business seemed feasible, to loose off
a shot ; and since they found no more than two men
in residence, this duly happened. Heinrich then
boldly climbed up and took possession, sending a
mounted messenger to Hans at three in the morning,
according to arrangement. ‘ And when the shot went
off,’ records Schweinichen, ‘ I feared most greatly,
and I said to those who lay in the chamber with me :
“ This shot will ruin my lord with his country and
his people.”’ The doors having been opened, Hans
learned that his fears were well founded, and that his
master was indeed snug in the Castle : ‘ nor did His
Grace think to come down again quickly.’ The horses,
servants and baggage were to be sent up the hill
immediately, but the steward was to wait at Hainau
till further notice. ‘ And since I could not undo what
was done, I obeyed and sent His Grace all that was
to hand.’

Again Hans’s only consolation was his inexpensive
solitude, and again this was not to last. Before two
days had elapsed the Duke had burdened him with

ON THE HEIGHTS 463

two Polish visitors, sending him, with unusual
generosity, six thalers wherewith to entertain them ;
‘ and although they had brought but sixteen horses,
yet the six thalers went in wine alone for the first
meal.’ Their entertainers, indeed, would soon have
been sorely put to it to keep their souls in their bodies
had not Heinrich changed his mind and summoned
the whole party to the GrOditzberg, where they found
His Princely Grace protected by a guard of twenty
footmen with long hackbuts; ‘and he had turned
himself into a man of war, had us announced by the
blowing of six trumpets and a kettle-drum.’

On the summit, therefore, of this Silesian mountain,
Duke Heinrich XL of Liegnitz — an unusual Moses —
now sat, surveying his promised land. Nor did he
find the occupation a tedious one. For, if his army
were small and his cofiers empty, his courage was
unalterably gay ; and with so efficient an aide-de-camp
as Hans at his beck and call, there was but little
likelihood of its failing through lack of refreshment.
From the first moment, indeed, their days were
thronged, and amid the customary delights of banquets
and bonfires, drinkings and dancings, the hours passed
quickly away. More than one wedding was celebrated
at the Castle, each occasion being productive of lively
incidents such as rejoiced the heart of His Grace;
while the ordinary necessities of food and drink
entailed a career of constant adventure no less ex-
hilarating than precarious.

For, even on this Pisgah-height, the steward's em-
barrassments were considerable. The great provision
of com had vanished quickly away, ‘ no one knew
whither,’ and the little store of money had proved
as fleeting as a summer dream. So, with sixty persons
and half as many horses to feed, it soon became
necessary to provision the Castle by the useful method
of purchase without payment, or the even simpler
device of seizure. Flour, salt, pigs, oxen and a
valuable cargo of lead were thus appropriated from

464 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

the neighbourhood, and the unpopularity of the enter-
prise grew to an alarming extent. The people soon
complained to the Bishop, and the prelate sent a
deputation to the offender, ordering him to give up both
castle and provender. But the Duke, having enter-
tained the emissaries generously for three days, dis-
missed them with polite unconcern. Moreover, on
the withdrawal of the deputation, he collected all his
artillery, consisting of about one hundred and fifty
hackbuts and muskets, and loosed them all off
with a running fire one after the other, ‘ which struck
the envoys rarely, for they had not imagined that ten
pieces were to hand. And after this they announced
that His Princely Grace had taken a company of
soldiers there with him, though there were not more
than three persons that loosed off the shots. His
Princely Grace remained sitting on the Grhditzberg.’

The catering, therefore, continued in the same lively,
if desultory, fashion. Three hundred and twenty-
five aged rams, so old that none other would buy
them, were obtained on credit from a cousin of Hans,
while various birds were caught in the woods by
means of snares and springes. The retrieving of these
birds became, in fact, Duke Heinrich’s favourite
morning pastime, and, to the great wrath of the retinue,
it was strictly forbidden for any onp else to interfere
with the sport. ‘Wherefore I had to imprison the
pages in the guard-room, and set the servants in the
tower. And I came thereby into great disfavour, and
yet was but little helped.’ Not infrequently also the
daily bag was supplemented in an unexpected fashion.
Thus one of the two Polish noblemen, whom Hans
was by way of instructing in the gentler manners of
Germany, shot at a sparrow and killed an ox. When
rebuked he displayed impenitence, not to say triumph,
whereupon his tutor desired to chastise him. This,
however, the Duke forbade, as a highly impolitic act,
since, ‘when I am King of Poland, this youth may
turn you into a great lord.'

HEINRICH XL FISHES 465

Fish was procured in a masterly manner. Having
heard that a vast quantity of carp was preserved by
Duke Friedrich in the neighbouring tanks of Arnsdorf,
Duke Heinrich promptly netted five waggon-loads of
the fish, and returned in triumph to the GrSditzberg.
Friedrich stormed in vain, and threatened, if it happened
again, to repel force with force. But this merely
incited Heinrich to more brilliant efforts, and when he
received news that ‘ the usurper ’ would, on a certain
day, go a-fishing himself in the tanks with a guard of
fifty hackbutters and twenty-five horse, he resolved
upon immediate action. ‘Hans,’ he said, ‘we must
arrange a diversion : make a reckoning of how many
horses strong we can set out, and we will go down
and frighten brother Friedrich a little by the Arnsdorf
pond.’ Hans once more remonstrated in vain : ‘ His
Grace would not be turned therefrom, advised me to
waste no ill words upon any one, and I should soon
see how he would chase away Duke Friedrich and his
guard.’

They started out bravely with a company of nine-
teen horses, three trumpeters, six hackbutters, two
lackeys, and a waggon full of fishing-nets. When
they arrived on the spot they heard that Duke
Friedrich was out on the pond in a little boat. ‘ And
His Grace said to me, “ Hans, now is the time ; get
you to work.’” At sight of the invaders Friedrich’s
watchman fired a warning shot, whereupon Hans let
the trumpets blow, at first in succession and then all
at a time. A great commotion instantly arose among
Friedrich’s servants, every man running for his armour,
and all who could, including the hackbutters, fleeing
into the bushes by the meadows. As for the princely
fisherman himself, he ‘became so uneasy on his pond
that hardly could he be brought from thence without
faint ing ’ ; in short, he jumped out of the boat, waded in
the mud, and ‘ so lost all his breath.’ When, finally,
he cried for his marksmen and found that none were
there, his fears got the better of him, and ‘with six

466 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

horses and his heart in his mouth, he fell on to his
palfrey and so back to Liegnitz. And when the others
saw how His Grace rode, then rode they also every
man at his pleasure.’ Duke Heinrich smiled amiably
upon the few Liegnitzers who had bravely remained
to watch him, and invited them to come with their
master to the GrOditzberg and eat the fish which he
was now collecting at his leisure : ‘ But if your master
will not come, then come yourselves, for you are
honest fellows; and be no more frightened.’ And
he left benevolently with the words : ‘ Good luck,
I will come again to-morrow.’ The next day, accord-
ingly, Duke Friedrich surrounded the pond with
hackbutters and cavalry; but, needless to say, Hans’s
master never dreamed of returning.

Nor was this the end of the adventure ; for, while
Duke Friedrich and the whole defensive force of
Liegnitz were still intent upon protecting Arnsdorf—
‘and his pond-fishing soon cost him more than the
fish were worth’ — Duke Heinrich gained knowledge
of a great store of wool that lay not far off. This
he at once took to himself, together with four dozen
fine fat sheep and ten kegs of butter which had been
expressly intended for the ducal table at Liegnitz ;
and, the better to point his moral, he wrote next day
to his brother and thanked him warmly for having
‘ made such good wool to grow upon the sheep,
fattened such excellent mutton and prepared such
beautiful butter.’ So there were gay hearts on the
GrOditzberg: ‘After the evil days came once more
princes’ and lords’ days; and we let them not bum
away, but lived in joy and knew no want.’

But this halcyon calm was not to last. Soon after
the raid the Bishop again interfered, and this time
he remonstrated with Duke Heinrich in so friendly
a fashion that His Grace felt constrained to make
a similar response. Hans was entrusted with the
delicate business, and acquitted himself brilliantly,
explaining to the prelate and commissioners that the

THE DESCENT 467

Duke had only acquired his predatory habits on the
cessation of the allowance from his brother, when,
unused to nourish himself with wind, he had been
forced to procure sustenance as best he might; that
this allowance had been continued but for four weeks
after the Imperial command, and that therefore more
than two thousand thalers’ worth of food were still
owing to him ; and finally, that it behoved both the
Bishop and the Emperor to attend rather to the due
delivery of this allowance than to the manner in which
the unfortunate victim was meanwhile compelled to
gain his precarious livelihood. And with this answer
the Bishop had perforce to content himself. Heinrich,
it must be added, was perfectly ready to confront
his brother in any number of interviews, and several
were actually arranged. But Friedrich had no stomach
for the matter, and at the last moment the meeting
was invariably postponed.

Winter, however, was approaching, and the airy
fortress promised soon to become unliveable. So, not
without many misgivings, Duke Heinrich determined
to brave once more the lukewarm zephyrs of respect-
ability; once more to visit Prague and his offended
suzerain, and once more to coax from the princes of
the Empire such letters of goodwill as should lend
a lustre and more great opinion to the enterprise.
This visiting — accomplished in his own incomparable
manner — occupied the best part of a year, and it was
not till the August of 1579 that the party reached
Prague. It was then even more impressive and more
expensive than on former occasions, for not only had
the Duchess been hastily collected to add an aureole of
conjugal devotion to the princely brow, but the young
princesses had at last been successfully abstracted
from the protecting wing of their kinsman. Nor, when
the wanderers assembled in the Bohemian capital, were
their purses any the heavier for the ducal vagaries of a
twelvemonth.

Hans, indeed, complains bitterly of his griefs. He

468 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

had himself— on the pretext of illness — spent the
summer weeks at Liegnitz, courting the lady of his
heart and rejoicing in his well-earned holiday. But
now, he groans, ‘ I fell out of heaven into hell, out
of joy into misery and lamentation ; had again to order
and arrange both kitchen and cellar and all necessaries,
and there was no money to hand.’ His diary develops
a tense and almost tragic tone ; ‘ Pledged a golden
musket of His Princely Grace.’ ‘ Pledged a golden
cup, from which His Grace at all times drank.’

‘ Pledged a ring with diamonds and a medallion, with
which ring the Jew made off.’ ‘ Pledged a jewel and
a pocket time-piece for forty thalers — ^were worth more
than a hundred.’ ‘ Pledged His Grace’s gilded rapier.’

‘ Pledged a silver porringer belonging to the Duchess,
and therewith a little cup ; and this happened because
the Duchess had at play lost a breakfast to the Herr
von Hassenstein.’ ‘ Pledged my sword, that the
Duchess might have one single meal.’ ‘ Pledged an
emerald cross for twenty thalers, but it went quickly,
since certain lords came to pay court to the princesses.’
‘Pledged His Grace’s golden saddle with the velvet
housings, on which he daily rode to the Castle.’ And
at last (O cruel day), ‘pledged the curtains of His
Grace’s bed.’

Duchess Sophia herself was finally sent forth with
her daughters to beg for a loan of four thousand thalers
from a wealthy Bohemian of the neighbourhood, who,
having no children or encumbrances of his own, would
surely, thought the Duke, be generously inclined
towards those of others. But the nobleman — ^so ‘ over-
rich’ that his very carrying-chair, with all its poles,
was of gilded silver — had no ready money to spare, and
the good Duchess returned almost as empty-handed as
she went. Indeed, by the time she had entertained all
the suitors who came to welcome the young princesses
after their three days’ absence, there was little or
nothing to show for her pains. One of these suitors,
by the way, raised glorious hopes in the ducal breast,

DISTRESS AT PRAGUE 469

having made known, through the medium of a Jew
broker, that on condition of his marriage with the
Lady Emilia he was willing to lend no less a sum than
ten thousand thalers. Duke Heinrich was charmed,
but not so Emilia. Hans, whose sympathies were
with the princess, went promptly to reconnoitre, and
discovered a French lady ‘in every comer’ of the
would-be bridegroom’s house. When the elderly
gentleman not only boasted of his harem, but actually
showed it off with pride, the visitor remarked diplo-
matically that, if the marriage were accomplished, ‘ ail
these little doves and mice ’ would have to depart, and
hereupon the suitor, surprised and dismayed, relin-
quished his pretensions. Hans returned home in
triumph, dragging with him the chief villain of the
piece: ‘ and what tricks I played that Jew on the way
back are not to be told.’

These transactions did not assist the empty ex-
chequer, and the little company was often sorely put
to it to procure even one good meal a day. Duke
Heinrich, indeed, was no great sufferer himself ; for
‘ when His Princely Grace knew that there was little
forthcoming in the lodging, then he came not home to
his meals, but stayed at the Court, and left it to me to
feed the Duchess and the princesses. But when he
knew that I had money and could give food, he not
only came home but also brought guests with him.
And what this caused me of grief, care, trouble and
inconvenience I can never sufficiently tell. For the
one wanted this, and the other wanted that, and there
was nothing available ; and when I had nothing to
give them, I had to fight. And my master was vexed
with me when there was nothing to hand ; thought
not otherwise than that I was in fault.’ Hans would,
in brief, advise no young man to take upon him such
a life, for ‘ I have verily received nothing in return,
not so much as would pay for a quart of wine.’

This state of things continued for months, since it
was necessary to wait for the Emperor’s decision, and

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

470

the Emperor seemed unable to make up his mind.
Twice did Hans go home to Liegnitz to see what he
could procure, and twice came back with empty hands,
to find the princely ladies starving in their rooms,
the princely horses starving in their stalls. Duke
Friedrich finally arrived and was constrained to pay
the much-disputed allowance; yet this was but a
cupful in the ocean of debt. Even the Papal Nuncio
was tried and found wanting, for although he eagerly
offered both to lend ‘ 1,000 and yet another 100 florins’
and to reinstate Heinrich in his duchy, this was only
on condition of his reverting to the old religion. * And
that is what I call burning a candle to the devil, and
being led by the devil on to a high mountain. But
albeit His Grace’s need was great, yet he would budge
no inch in the matter of religion.’

One lonely gleam traversed the poor steward’s
dismal days, and this was when, having sold the
countless valuable objects already in pawn, he obtained
a sum of quite imposing dimensions. He tells the
story with child-like pleasure : ‘ Because I saw that
His Grace and his princely consort were suffering from
want, I rose early and counted out the money from the
sold pledges on to the table, shut the door, and went
away. Now His Grace lay somewhat long that morn-
ing, more from misery than any other reason. And
when he rose and went into the other room he saw no
one, but only the table laid out with gold, and could
not imagine whence the money might have come ; had
indeed the thought that a spirit had brought it to him ;
cried to the pages that they should seek for me, but
would allow no other in the room. And His Grace
was impatient for my presence, for I tarried. At
length I let myself be found, and went to him in his
chamber ; and there was great joy abroad. And His
Grace was well pleased, and was “liebes Kind” thereat,
and had I now asked him for a great favour he would
not have denied me, even to several thousand thalers.
And after this His Grace was gay, and ordered me

HEINRICH XI. HIMSELF AGAIN 471

to arrange a banquet ; for after sorrow would he have
gladness.’

At length, in September 1580, after more than a
year’s delay, the Emperor appointed a day for the great
announcement. Duke Heinrich, who during all this
period had industriously waited upon his sovereign’s
pleasure at least twice a day, now redoubled his
attentions, while Hans had to visit so many dis-
tinguished people to obtain their support for his
master that ‘ I received no little injury to my body,
and shall in my old age well feel those steps of Prague.’
The immediate result, however, was brilliant, for on
the fateful day no less than fifty-six gentlemen of the
Court rode with Duke Heinrich from the old town
to the Castle, and His Grace’s procession made so
fine a show that even Imperial Majesty itself had
to praise him with the words : ‘ The Duke of Liegnitz
is verily a courtier.’ As for the worthy but un-
impressive Friedrich, he had a modest escort of three
Silesians only.

Yet, even now, the Imperial decision was only
partially revealed, and it was not till a month later,
when the little company, having with infinite difficulty
won loose from their creditors at Prague, arrived in
Liegnitz, that the full charm of the situation was made
known to them. For the long-expected judgment
was of a humorous character, and reminds us not
a little of the Ingoldsby Legends : ‘ Duke Heinrich
should live at Liegnitz and Duke Friedrich at Hainau,’
was the brief annoxmcement, ‘ and they should reign
together, and together share the income, and live
with each other in friendly and brotherly fashion.’
So the keys of the Castle were taken from the younger
and given to the elder brother, and Heinrich forth-
with handed them, in the presence of all, to Hans,
exclaiming with pride, ‘ Now again am I Duke of
Liegnitz.’ But the unlucky Friedrich, besides being
evicted from his home, was forced to divide all the
stores and provender which he had left there on his

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

472

departure ; and he betook himself to Hainan ‘ not in
the same gay mood as my lord, but rather with
trembling and gloom.’

And now at last, thought Hans, would debtors
cease from troubling and a weary steward be at
rest.

But the Duke in possession was not greatly more
prosperous than the Duke in exile, and the windy
night had its yet more rainy morrow. Provisions
there were indeed — ^half Friedrich’s — and for a time
the Duchess might have her full five meals a day. But
there was still no coin in the exchequer. The fame
of Duke Heinrich had gone abroad, and with wonderful
unanimity his loyal subjects, when approached,

‘ schlugen ganzlich ab.’ Old creditors also appeared,
and would by no means be satisfied. Moreover, His
Grace — who wished at any cost ‘ to hold a great Court,’
yet thoroughly distrusted his formerSilesian courtiers —
insisted upon bestowing all the household appointments
upon foreigners ; and, since these had no interest in
anything save expenditure and greed, the snowball
of extravagance rolled merrily on. The new Court-
Marshal, appointed to relieve Schweinichen of the
commissariat department of his now multifarious
duties, was an especial thorn in his superior’s side;
for he did little or nothing, complains Hans, ‘but
lay in his house from one meal to another. When
the time came for the table to be laid for dinner, and
the cook leaned out of the kitchen window screaming,
“ Herr Marshal, there is nothing to eat,” he only
raised such a cursing and scolding that it would
have been no wonder had the Castle sunk into the
earth.’

So poor Hans passed his days in turmoil : ‘ Laid me
down with sorrow and rose up with care.’ His Grace,
on the other hand, was ‘lustig und guter Dinge':

COURTSHIP 473

‘ let sleeping dogs lie, thought himself at large among
the roses ; daily must the trumpets blow to table with
the beating of kettle-drums, and almost daily was he
cheerful with tilting at the ring, riding, dancing,
drinking and other diversions. And if aught were
lacking, no matter what, so said His Grace : “ Hans,
see to it, order it, bring it about,’’ and laid the burden
on to my shoulders. Yet I also was gay and glad,
and so passed the time away.’

Hans, indeed, had at this time special reasons for
being gay and glad. Some two or three years before
he had entered into a ‘ sweethearting ’ more serious
than usual. He had first met the lady, Jungfrau
Margarethe Schellendorf von Hermsdorf, at a wedding,
where he does not seem to have impressed her
favourably. When her mother told her that he was
a nobleman, she replied incredulously, ‘ He is surely
no noble, he is far too ugly.’ But he soon converted
her to a better frame of mind: ‘I spoke with the
aforesaid maid one evening for several hours in a
window, and asked her if she could love me, and
whether she would take me’ (O cautious Hans) ‘if I
desired it. Whereupon she said yes, if I were in
earnest she would never take any but me. And so it
remained, and we were cheerful and buhleten flugs
nein.’ When camping on the Grdditzberg he seized
every excuse for paying a visit to his lady, and it is
wonderful how convenient a spot Hermsdorf proved
itself to be for the transaction of the various com-
missions on which he was constantly being dispatched
by his master. On one occasion, in fact, he remained
so long absent that, on his tardy return, Duke Heinrich
was seriously annoyed and threatened to have him
arrested ; and it might have gone ill with him had he
not been able to soften the princely heart by pointing
out that it ‘ had no right to be angry, since I had only
been dallying among lovely heads, such as His Grace
also gladly frequented.’ His enforced absences with
his vagrant lord had tried him sorely, but Margarethe

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

474

had promised to wait. ‘ Her mother indeed warned
her not to set her heart upon me, for I was a
courtier and would surely deceive her; I was now
riding away ; who knew when I 'should return ? ’ But
the maiden let herself not be persuaded nor moved,
and remained steadfast.

Now, therefore, in this year of 1581, ‘ I prayed that
my heart might be enlightened as to whither I was
wending, whether I should remain in my present
condition, or give myself over to the state of matrimony ;
whereupon Almighty God, without doubt, heard my
prayer, and so disposed my heart that I gained a
wonderful love and longing for marriage.’ On
Christmas morning, in the middle of the sermon, ‘ it
came to me in my heart, and as though it had been
whispered in one ear ; “ Take the Duke with thee, and
ask for the maid ; and go thither in the sleigh ; but if
thou goest not to-morrow, the maid will not be given
to thee." ’ And that night again the same words came
to him. Hans, therefore, confided the matter to his
master, and His Princely Grace, who was still an
ardent matchmaker, gave prompt consent. Setting
out, as directed, with four hunting-sleighs and an escort
of twelve cavaliers, they arrived at Hermsdorf, finding,
to their horror, a pack of other young dogs evidently
bent on the same errand. The Duke instantly led the
‘ lady mother ’ on one side, and ‘ not a quarter of an
hour had passed when His Grace came to me and
said : “ Hans, the maid is thine : be joyful.” ’ ‘ And so
all these Compopers’ he proudly concludes, ‘had to
fare away, and I held my ground alone.’

The only difficulty now was to fix the happy day.
Frau Schellendorf, who was not over-pleased at the
match, declared roundly that her house was too small
for the entertainment of guests in cold weather, and
that the function must be postponed till the summer.
But at this Duke Heinrich again intervened, averring
that the ceremony should certainly be accomplished in
the Castle of Liegnitz, and that without loss of time.

BETROTHAL 475

The wedding was therefore arranged for the middle
of February, and the formal betrothal took place at
once.

Nor was even this a light matter, for the customs
of Silesia demanded no meagre allowance of pomps and
etiquettes. The first step was for the intending bride-
groom to invite all his male friends to supper, and
this Hans accordingly did, entertaining with lordly
hospitality His Princely Grace and three tables full
of Silesian nobility. On the morrow the Duke — when
he willed, the most amiable and amenable of princes —
was sent with an escort of kinsmen and cavalry to
make the formal demand for the lady’s hand, and a
few hours after Hans himself, accompanied by a troop
of horse and the ‘ women-kind ’ of his family, followed
to Hermsdorf. The ducal cavalry also turned back
to meet him, so he made an entry as glorious ‘as
though it had been the wedding itself.’ Yet still
among his roses lurked irritating thorns. He had
ordered his friends, in the event of the still p>ossible
refusal, to warn him by loosing off ‘ a few shots into
the windmill,’ and as he approached the happy bourne
of his hopes no less than 1,000 shots were, to his
horror, discharged. This proved to be a practical joke
on the part of his convivial kinsmen, but in sober fact
the mother-in-law-to-be was taking a very exalted line
about the settlements, and showing herself a most
obdurate bargainer.

Thanks chiefly to the firmness of the ducal trustee,
the matter was finally compromised, and the great
moment arrived for Hans to make the betrothal
speech. ‘ Wherefore,’ he tells with satisfaction, ‘ I
rehearsed the whole cause and circumstances that had
moved me to such a marriage, namely, the high and
noble race, the honourableness and constancy of the
maiden, and furthermore, the feeling that it was the
special ordination of God, and that the maiden had
been singled out for me by God ; the which, with
many corollaries, lasted for half an hour, so that even

476 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

the damsel’s friends declared that they had never heard
such a comprehensive, well-reasoned request as this of
mine, and that it must in truth come from my heart.’
When the speech was at an end the company feasted
and rejoiced to the uttermost, ‘ especially many guests
who had ridden up merely for curiosity’s sake.’

The Duke insisted on the wedding being celebrated
with marked splendour, though with the sensible and
characteristic proviso that the bride’s mother should
pay the most of the expenses and the bridegroom
undertake all the toil — His Princely Grace himself
‘ remaining wholly unmolested.’ Hans, therefore, grew
quite thin with fussiness ; for now he had to consider
not only how to arrange the eating, drinking and
inviting, but also how to dress both himself and his
bride for the (should-be) unique occasion. Off he
went to Breslau, to choose the wherewithal for the
dresses at the excellent warehouse of Adam MQhl-
pforten : ‘ so for myself and my bride a green silken
satin, lined with a silk of silver ; furthermore, for
myself a red velvet for the coat slashed with red
double taffeta, in good German fashion, as it was at
this time worn ; so also for the servants and pages
all necessaries of armour and fustian, and I had
them clad in scarlet and white ; and I ordered white
crane’s feathers and heron’s feathers for my horse’s
plumes.’

His troubles, however, were not yet at an end ; for
when, exhausted with shopping and yearning for a
little rest, he returned from Breslau to Mertschtltz, he
found not only Duke Heinrich himself but also the
ladies Kittlitzin, old and young, comfortably ensconced
in the family mansion, and being exceedingly hilarious
at their unwilling host’s expense. ‘And this for no
reason save that I was to bring some small fairings
for His Grace also, and that he was desirous to wait
for them.’ Furthermore, hilarity notwithstanding, the
ladies were in exceedingly bad tempers, and deter-
mined to mark in no dubious fashion their disapproval

A VEXATIOUS INTERLUDE 477

of Hans’s marriage. In the morning, therefore— the
victim had arrived late at night— when they came
into the sitting-room, they vouchsafed him no greeting
of any kind, although ‘we had formerly been such
great friends, and I was their host.’ Greatly annoyed,
he let fly an exclamation of wrath concerning unsoli-
cited visitors. This unfortunately gave the shrewish
females their opportunity of revenge, and they in-
stantly went to the Duke, declaring that Hans was mad,
that he had declined to speak to them, and that he
had even said with sacrilegious tongue, ‘ May the
devil fly away with all guests!’ At this misrepre-
sentation Duke Heinrich was so hurt and offended,
that, despite his host’s ' sweet words ’ and excuses,
despite even the beguiling information that he had
brought back from Breslau a specially ‘good little
cask of wine,’ His Grace climbed stracks into his
coach, and so departed away, repeating with emphasis
that Hans might have his wedding where he chose —
except at the Castle.

The bridegroom was in despair, for the august
occasion was but two weeks off and everything was
already arranged. His mourning, however, was of no
long duration, for — thanks, we may suppose, to that
special casklet of wine — even while he was still
sitting disconsolately in his room, the irate one
returned. ‘ And he asked where I was, and they said
in my chamber. And His Grace said, “ Ho, then, we
will tease the young wooer.” And he said to my
brother, “ George, I will breakfast with thee, but with
Hansy not ” {id est, me).’ Hans, though overjoyed, sat
still and feigned ignorance, till Heinrich broke into
the room, exclaiming: ‘ Up, bridegroom, the bride has
come.’ ‘ And then I jumped up as though I was
sorely startled, and bade His Grace obediently wel-
come. And thus were we master and man again, and
drank together till His Grace could not walk. And I
made it right with Frau Kittlitzin, and there was on all
sides peace.’ Even so, indeed, there was one more

478 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

lion, or rather lioness, in his path ; for when he
returned to Liegnitz he found that the Duchess was
incensed against him for entertaining her lord and the
Kittlitzin together at Mertschtttz, and it was not till he
had promised that the offensive rival should not be at
the wedding that Her Grace consented to attend it:
‘And I had to give Her Grace a signed and sealed
document, that she should not be present.’

All these vexatious storms being at length satis-
factorily lulled, Hans proceeded with his preparations
for the arduous glories of his espousals. Nor were
his labours thrown away, for when, on the great day,
he equipped himself for the entry into Liegnitz, he
amazed all beholders. ‘ And God gave me important
friends,’ he writes with pleasant arrogance, ‘with
whom I stood well. Wherefore I had 54 horsemen
as escort, with 13 carriages of men and womenkind,
106 horses all told, and at Hainan the night before I
had spent 72 thalers, for I had entertained all my
friends.’ On the bride’s side, the more distinguished
acquaintances unfortunately stayed away out of dislike
to His Grace, having, indeed, heard a report that he in-
tended to take all the women’s ornaments from them.
But the Duke himself sent out 48 horsemen to meet the
bridegroom : ‘ so there was a fine procession, being in
truth too much for a mere nobleman, but His Grace my
master would have it so.’

Hans, however, was not too intent on his glories
to play a trick on an ancient enemy. Some time
before his engagement he had agreed with one Kaspar
Heillungen, a rival in the ducal household, that which-
ever of the two should be the first to marry should
forfeit the wedding-horse, with all its trappings, to
the other. The moment had now come to keep the
agreement, and this Hans hastened, in his own fashion,
to do. It was a part of the bond that the winner of
the horse should hold the stirrup for the bridegroom
when he dismounted, take the animal from him,
mount it, and ride away. Hans, therefore, possessing

Marriage 479

a brown horse which was so lively ‘ a kicker, biter
and roarer, that if one rode alone his life was not safe
thereon,’ naturally chose this animal for his wedding-
charger, and adorned it finely with white crane and
heron feathers.^ Naturally, also, Kaspar, who realised
the situation, did not put in an appearance at the dis-
mounting, and Hans, having let the horse stand for an
hour unheld, triumphantly ordered his servant to lead
it, plumes and all, back to his own stables. Heillungen
afterwards, feigning ignorance, reminded Hans of the
agreement, and demanded a hundred florins instead
of the horse. But the bridegroom retorted that the
animal was still there, and that he had but to take it
away. ‘ Thereupon he waxed wroth, but obtained not
much from me. And I kept the horse.’

Meanwhile the Duke, with grave formality, had sent
a messenger to meet the procession and invite it
to the Castle. And thither the company went. ‘ Had
dressed myself,’ writes the hero, ‘ in green of a silken
satin lined with a silk of silver, and all ray womenkind
in the same green ; ® went from my lodging with drums
and pipes as a landsknecht.’ On their arrival at the
Castle the kettle-drums were beaten and the trumpets
blown, and the bridegroom was summoned to the
former women’s apartments to receive His Grace and
the bride. ‘ And I was forthwith led by His Grace to
the great hall for the wedding, my bride and her
womenkind being all clad in green. When the wedding
and surrender was accomplished, we were ail together
well and royally entertained, and therewith glad and
gay of heart The Rose Room ’ (no longer iron-bound,
let us hope) ‘ was given to us by his Grace, wherein we
met with happiness and honour ; and I was, like the

^ Crane-feathers were a favourite adornment of men, women and
horses. * As I understand that in the Marck there are many crane-
feathers to be procured,’ writes Countess Elizabeth of Wiirtemberg to
Anna of Brandenburg, ‘ I pray you to send me some that are fine and
white and long enough to make a plume.’ Duchess Sophia crif
Pomerania sends to Dantzic for a *bush’ to give her son-in-law.
{Privatbrufi,)

* See Illustrative Notes, 75.

48 o an epic of debts

bride, a clean virgin, and neither had aught with which
to reproach the other.’

A lively week was now spent at Liegnitz with
banquets and masquerades, at which the Duke affably
assisted, hanging his hat upon a nail with the words :
‘There hangs the prince, here sits a good brother.’

‘ And he was soon a full brother,’ adds Hans sardonic-
ally. At the conclusion of the festivities, the new
husband and wife went to Mertschutz for the honey-
moon, and here for a fortnight they were ‘ merry and
of good cheer ’ and bore them ‘ as married people use.’
Yet even at this crowning moment of his life poor
Hans was pursued by money troubles. ‘ In my
affairs,’ he sadly writes, ‘ the debts began again to
trouble me. And I had by no means the privilege, as
named in the Old Testament, that young married
people should for the first year be free of all burdens ;
rather had I to take upon myself much trouble and
care, both for myself and in my service. None the
less was I joyful, let not a bitter wind blow round me,
but trusted God and loved my Maurauschlein, and
left nothing undone in my master’s service.’

But this year of 1581 was to be of moment both to
Hans and to Heinrich in ways other and less cheerful
than these pleasant paths of matrimony. The first
hint of danger appeared when the Duke was com-
manded to attend the Diet of Breslau. His Grace,
uneasy in his conscience and dreading bad faith, sent
Hans in his stead. And the envoy returned with a
strong presentiment that there was mischief brewing.
Soon after this Duke Heinrich was summoned to
Prague to render his oath of allegiance, and again,
fearing that he might be detained indefinitely, he sent
word that he had caught a cough, and was wholly
unable to come. So the blow fell, and the Emperor —

THE BUTTER WAR 481

already incensed against Heinrich on account of his
‘ evil life, his disorderly government and his Polish
plottings,’ and now doubly vexed by this disregard of
his orders — sent a command to the Silesian Estates
that His Grace was to be besieged at Liegnitz and
reduced to obedience.

To this the Duke’s loyal subjects most joyfully
acceded, and, at two o’clock in the night of June 6, news
came to the Castle that the Bishop and Duke Friedrich
were advancing upon it with various Silesian notabili-
ties and a large contingent of horse and foot.

When Duke Heinrich learned the terrible tidings ‘ it
was not well with him,’ and he was at a loss to know
what steps he should take. As something must be
done, he ordered Hans to beat up the town. So the
steward fell on to a horse and galloped through the
streets, with dnimmers running and drumming by
his side. The burghers, though in their first sleep,
showed all haste to respond. Instantly there appeared
on each house a lantern with a light, and in an hour
there were over 1,000 men with ‘their best weapons’
assembled in the market-place. In the meantime the
Duke was doing his utmost to prepare the Castle for a
siege, ordering the cannon on the walls and himself,
with the Court household, fetching in cattle, com and
wood. When all this was arranged His Grace rode to
the town hall, explained to the Council how matters
stood, and asked their intentions. The burghers,
reflecting perhaps that the extravagance of Heinri<A
was more profitable to them than the parsimony of his
brother, showed a gallant spirit, requesting their lord
‘ to dispose of them, honour, property, life and limb ;
and rather than that a hair should be taken from His
Grace would the whole town go to ruin : and so all
held up their hands.’ After this the Duke went to
the market-place and harangued the populace, who,
when they learned what the Council and elders had
conceded, agreed ‘ with great eagerness and joy, each
one crying, “Yea, yea, yea, life and limb will we lay

482 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

down for His Grace.” ’ Officers were now appointed,
and the walls manned, Hans himself commanding a
hundred marksmen and fifty hackbutters on the
Castle wall; and, when day dawned, Duke Heinrich
sent eight trumpeters, a kettle-drum and three small
pieces to the top of the main tower.^

At seven in the morning the fun began. The watch-
men on the tower cried : ‘ They are moving towards
us by all the roads, like black crows.’ And hereupon
the Duke commanded that the cannon should be let
off, the trumpets blown and the drums beaten, as
a sign both of his stoutness of heart and of his
contempt of the Imperial enterprise. The attacking
army, about 3,000 strong, encamped by the little
fortress in the meadows ; but it was greatly dismayed
by its martial reception. ‘ We have been betrayed,’
said the Lord Bishop, when he heard the 'drumming
and the trumpeting, ‘and shall gain nothing but
mockery, nor bring away aught but disaster.’ The
princes and officers dismounted from their horses to
consult, having become aware that the Duke ‘was
jo3rful with his Liegnitzers and well off, and that they
must see to it to extricate themselves from such a
farce.’ Scarcely, however, had they left their saddles,
when there arose a cry that Duke Heinrich was falling
upon them with horse and foot several hundred strong,
and at this there grew such a terror among them
that the Council was hurriedly abandoned. ‘ The lords,
supposing that the danger was pressing, clamoured
sorely that their horses might be brought to them ;
and many of the foot-soldiers threw away their armour
and fled : in such wise that one of the Schweidnitz’s
choked and remained dead from the running which
he did.’

It soon appeared that the cause of this panic was no
more than a frightened horse galloping upon the
causeway. None the less, exhausted by the violence

' Two fine brick towers, dating fi:om. the fifteenth century, are still
standing. The Schloss is now a museum.

IMPENDING DISASTER 483

of their alarm, and still further dismayed by the in-
telligence that, despite their utmost precautions, a
reinforcement of fifty hackbutters had already passed
into the Castle, the episcopal army quickly decided that
negotiation was the safer plan. With much blowing
of trumpets, therefore, and in the hearing of all, they
proclaimed the causes of the Imperial dissatisfaction,
which, briefly put, were the disobedience of the Duke
concerning the oath, and the evil condition in which
he maintained both his house and his duchy. His
Princely Grace returned soft words and honeyed
explanations, and, after considerable discussion, the
matter was seemingly settled. Heinrich consented to
render the oath of allegiance at the Bishop’s palace,
and the princes, spiritual and temporal, rode away.
The ‘ Butter-War ’ of Liegnitz was at an end. Three
persons came by their death in it, concludes Hans:
‘whether they died of fright or other causes is not
known to me, but no man was shot The cows on the
ramparts had the worst of it, since they had nothing
to eat and were hourly in fear of their necks.’

But the trouble was by no means over, and retribu-
tion was already overtaking Duke Heinrich. Only a
few days later His Princely Grace was once more
ordered to Prague, and this time he dared not disobey.
Hans had retired to Mertschfitz to comfort his
Maurauschlein for her recent terrors, and received his
summons with the gravest distaste : ‘ It was not good
news to me, and especially not to my dear wife, where-
fore I let two or three commands slide by ; but at last
one morning, as I was still sleeping. His Grace came
himself and took me out of my bed. So began again
my misery and martyrdom, for there was much to
order and no money to hand.’

At IVag^e they learned that Duke Friedrich had also
been summoned, and the news struck a chill to their
hearts. Moreover, a mmour soon reached the ears of
Heinrich that Imperial Majesty intended to arrest him,
at which ‘ he was not a little harassed and grief-laden,’

484 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

He consulted his three attendants as to the best line of
action under these distressing circumstances, and at
length determined to ride incontinently away, leaving
the unfortunate trio to excuse him as best they might
to the Emperor. To this, however, Hans, emboldened
by the responsibilities of husbandhood, would by no
means agree, although the other two councillors both
gave their consent : ‘ I announced clearly,’ he tells,
‘ that if His Princely Grace rode forth, so would I also
ride or run thence on foot, for I would not take this
burden on myself.’ The Duke was displeased with
this obstinacy, and for a time adhered to his decision.
Indeed, a horse was actually saddled, and a Polack pre-
pared to assist his flight. Hans, however, continued
to argue, and finally brought his master round to the
opinion ‘ that, should he ride away, he would ride out
of the hearts of his country and his people.’ The
horse and the Polack were therefore unharnessed, and
Duke Heinrich, with reluctant courage, remained to
confront his fate.

Nor did the sword remain long in suspension, for
but a few days later there came one of the Emperor’s
Trabants, announcing the Imperial mandate that the
Duke was on the morrow, at nine in the moiriing, to
betake himself to the dining-hall of the Castle and there
await further instructions. The summons was ‘ as a
gun-shot ’ to His Princely Grace, and again he would
gladly have escaped. But on all sides, though secretly,
a watch had been set ; ‘ even in the house had one
been laid, so that His Grace could not away, but must
perforce remain.’

And on the morrow — October 13, 1581 — the end
came. At seven in the morning Heinrich and Hans,
too uneasy for slumber, betook themselves to the
Castle : the Duke to perambulate the great hall, and
his attendant to make such investigations as he
could. When he came to the Presence-chamber,
Hans beheld, with alarm, that it was furnished with a
high seat and a bar, and prepared in all ways as

THE HOUR OF DOOM 485

when Imperial Majesty was about to pass sentence of
death : ' whereat I was appalled ; and I went to His
Grace and told him, and he was even more terrified.’
Moreover, when the fatal hour of nine drew near, the
whole of the guard turned out with drums and pipes,
and this, being almost unknown on a week-day, made
the Duke even more fearful. Once again he ‘ would
fain have been gone,’ but he was hemmed about by
secret spies, and flight was now out of the question.

As there seemed to be no alternative, the Duke at
length made up his mind to enter the Presence-
chamber. Indeed, he now faced the situation with a
touch of his old reckless gaiety, displayed a joyful
mien, ‘ so that none should note his uneasiness,’ and
replied to his accusers with tears of innocency and
terms of zeal. But it was of no avail. The Em-
peror himself was not present, and his officers had
received their orders. ‘ An elegant speech ’ from the
lord of Rosenberg,^ officer of the Crown of Bohemia,
expounded the case against the culprit, and Duke
Heinrich was taken into arrest. ‘ When His Grace,’
laments Hans, ‘ would further have declared his
guiltlessness there was no more hearing for him ; for
the lord of Rosenberg broke in and said that it was
Imperial Majesty’s command that His Grace should
go with him. And he took His Grace by the hand.’

The guard now began to file out of the chamber,
and with them went the Crown officer and his prisoner :
‘ and there was a great crowding, for every man
wished to see what would come of it’ Across the
great square they went, to the great hall, and thus to
the upper room over the hall. And among the crowd
went the faithful Hans, pressing with great eagerness
after his master, ‘ even as Peter followed our Lord.’

Hans, indeed, was in no small anxiety, obliged as
he was to behold not only his master but also Hans

^ This is Dr, Dee’s ‘ my Lord Rosenberg ’ (see Diary), It is a pity
that the ingenious alchemist did not go to Bohemia till i$86, and so
missed the acquaintance of Duke Heinrich.

486 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

Schramm, the worthy chancellor of Liegnitz, led away
into custody. Even old Lassota, the third of the ducal
attendants, had disappeared from his sight, and the
steward was filled with fears for his own liberty. The
crowd was so great that he could not make his way
up the stairs, and while he was still striving to ascend
he heard Rosenberg, who had already securely folded
the peccant sheep, inquiring with unpleasant insistence
after his whereabouts. ‘ Marshal,’ so ran the ominous
words, ‘where is the Schweinichen, the Duke of
Liegnitz’s steward ? ’ And the answer came, with re-
grettable promptitude : ‘ He will not be far, for I have
but now spoken with him.’ ‘ I was in truth not far,’
adds Hans, ‘but these words broke my heart, for I
would verily have wished to be at home with my
Maurauschlein, or over a hundred miles away ; could
not, however, disappear.’

Compelled, as his master before him, to put a brave
face on the matter, he pressed forward and made
known his presence with the remark, ‘ “ Gracious sir,
here I am”: for 'I thought, break or crack, you must
go through with it.’ Matters, however, were less
serious than he expected, for it appeared that he was
required for no graver purpose than the bodily
comfort of his master. Rosenberg, in fact, gave him
his hand, expressed his warm sympathy for both the
Duke and himself, and promised that they should be
consoled with every manner of good favour and good
treatment. Hans’s joy at these benevolent words was
as lively as his previous disquietude, and, having
returned ‘ great and obedient thanks,’ and commended
himself to the aforesaid favour, he departed to the
kitchen and cellar to be instructed. This, moreover, he
accomplished in so efficient a manner that in the briefest
possible time the Duke was being served with sixteen
dishes and an excellent wine. ‘ And although the good
gentleman was sad, he took heart that it would not
last long, for the lords had comforted His Grace also.’

Yet Duke Heinrich’s comfort can have been but

THE END OF THE EPIC 487

chilly and fleeting, for here, in the upper room of the
Castle of Prague, the final act of this debtor’s comedy
was drawing to its close. Here took place a last bright
outburst of borrowing and pawning, and here also
was accomplished a last sad parting between the
prince and his faithful servant. For this crisis ended
the court life of Hans von Schweinichen ; ended at
least that period of his court life in which he haH the
careless, cashless, conscienceless Heinrich as his mas ter.
Feeling that he was of but little use to the prisoner,
and desiring greatly to behold once more ‘ his dear
wife and Tiiplein {little he obtained permission

to return with the useless and starving retinue to
Liegnitz ; and he saw his master in life no more, nor
even performed for him the last high duty. The Duke
was removed to a further and more severe imprison-
ment at Breslau, thus fulfilling his father’s prediction.
After some years he contrived to escape, charac-
teristically enough, by giving his gaolers a generous
potion of wine as a preservative against the then
prevalent plague. Passing over the Oder, he made
his way to Poland and Sweden, returning thence with
the Swedish king for the coronation at Cracow:
‘whereby great terror arose in Silesia,’ ‘But there,
of a sudden. His Princely Grace was stricken and over-
taken by a sore fever, and so desired some milk
wherewith to refresh himself; and so soon as His
Grace had drunk of it, two hours thereafter he was
pale in death. Wherefore it is held for certain that
His Grace was imdone by poison.’ Duke Friedrich,
by order of the Emperor, declined to have the body
sent to Liegnitz for burial, and a resting-place had to
be found at Cracow. Since all here was Papist, even
this was a difficulty; but finally, with meagre cere-
mony and none to mourn, Duke Heinrich was laid
away on a shelf in the little chapel of the Begging
Friars, ‘ where without doubt the good gentleman will
remain to the Last Day.’

So drops away into obscurity this jnountebank of a

488 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

man : ' his life, like a can too full, spills upon the
bench.’ Nor can it be said that the loss of him was a
signal one, whether to Europe or to Silesia. Akin (if
but humbly) to the immortal Falstaff — lean of purse
as he was round of person, and with a heart uncon-
querably young and gay — he had had a kind of alacrity
in sinking, and had passed his gross, good-natured,
godless life slidingly, in a hurly-burly of useless
journeyings and unproductive debts. Hans sums up
the situation in an epitaph which is itself a masterpiece
of discretion. ‘ The pious gentleman,’ he gravely writes,
‘ suffered upon earth much woe and many reverses,
and had much tribulation among his people, albeit
there were many who loved and adhered to him ; and
thus he died, in such misery that it has never been
known that a Silesian prince has thus perished ; and
it is also a miracle and greatly to be marvelled at that
even the earth refused to let him in or take him, so
that by the special appointing of God he is and remains
unburied, above and over ground. Why this happened
God alone knoweth, and it pertains to His judgement.^
And by the said decease of this wise and pious prince
(which truly and heartily grieved me) was much
uneasiness removed from the hearts of the people,
which had feared him greatly ; contrariwise, hope fell
from the hearts of many who had placed trust in him.
May God be gracious to the lovely pious princely
soul, give the body a blessed rest in its walled-up
chapel, and from the said chapel grant His Princely
Grace on the Last Day a joyous uprising.’

Heinrich XL, indeed, had died with the same in-
comparable inconsequence with which he had lived.
A hardy and strenuous drinker, he had perished of
a mouthful of milk ; a confirmed Protestant, he had
found no final resting-place save the sanctuary of

^ There was a strong belief at this period that the earth refused to
welcome certain sinners to her bosom. Giustiniani saw a cofiin at
Cologne which had been four times buried, each time more deeply,
and four times vomited forth. (Bizoni.)

THE END OF THE EPIC 489

a Popish order; a constant pretender to the throne
of Poland, he had died at a rival’s coronation, and
with difficulty secured even the humble grace of
sepulture. In life, his first care had been his comfort
and his coffers, and in the uniting of these two had
lain his soul and its faculties. In death, his despised
and discarded bones took grateful refuge on the
desolate shelf of a pauper fraternity.

And so ‘ I ended my princely service,' concludes
Hans. ‘ May God now give and grant to me and my
Maurauschlein His grace, happiness and health ; pro-
vide and give our daily bread and what is good for
body and soul, and hold us by His Word to the end.
Amen.*

Schweinichen now entered the service, first, of old
Duke Georg of Brieg, and, later, of Duke Friedrich of
Liegnitz and his heirs, wherein he seems still to have
had ample cause for bemoaning himself over the
scarcity of money. He had several children ; but all
died in early life and left him alone with his Mau-
rauschlein. And at last even his little bat flew away.

‘ Ah, dear my heart,’ she said, ‘ wie Weh thuf scheiden :
how it hurts to be divided from thee.’ And again:

‘ Lay me by the window,’ that I see thee perchance a
while longer. And so her little soul fled, ‘ soft and still,
without a shudder, from the world, all here in this my
house at Liegnitz, in the upper room, by the window
that looks on to the street.’

Candour compels the confession that Hans married
again within the year. But, after all, had it not been
foretold to him in his nativity that he should be three
times wed? And since it was so evidently the will
of an all-wise Providence, it was surely best to be
through with the matter quickly. We leave him,
therefore, (or, rather, he leaves us) at the age of fifty,
with a new wife royally clad and garlanded in silken
robes and carnations from the gardens of a new
‘ Princely Grace ’ : ‘ and I was as the dear Tobias
with his bride,’ He ended his days — distressed by

490 AN EPIC OF DEBTS

gout, but surrounded by respect : whiling the slow sad
hours with wistful memories of a gayer past. For
Hans was no sudden scholar to relentless life, and
though consideration, in the guise of age and infirmity,
might ‘like an angel come and whip the offending
Adam out of him,’ he kept to the last a tender senti-
ment for the braver courses of his youth.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 (p. iv.). Prof. Isidoor Hye's comments on the travels of Rozmital
{Notices sur les Voyages faits en Belgique par les Eirangers, Gand,
1847) were made the subject of an article in The Quarterly Review
for 1850 by Richard Ford, and the Hakluyt Society seems to have
intended~but failed— to publish versions of both the Latin and the
German narratives. Recently, also, the late Dr. Richard Garnett
devoted a chapter of his ‘Alms to Oblivion ’in The Cornhill Magazine
to some of the minor adventures of the Palsgrave Frederick. But
these, so far as I am aware, are the sole appearances of these
chronicles in an English dress, and even they were not known to
me until I had practically finished the present papers. [Since the
book has been in the press, I have had the pleasure of reading
Professor Armstrong’s references to Rozmital in his interesting article
on Antonio de Beatis in The Q;iarterly Review for July, 1908.]

2 (p. vii.). Of three of these Gentlemen Errant there seem to be
no likenesses in any shape. In the case of Rozmital and Schaum-
burg the period is too early to produce portraits of any save persons^es
of high distinction or great wealth ; while Schweinichen was, it would
seem, not sufficiently exalted to be portrayed even in a more lavish
age of art. The Count Palatine Frederick, on the other hand, is
represented by several pictures and medals, having sat to Albrecht
Diirer himself at least four times. Indeed, according to Herr Alfred
Peltzer, the relations between these two men were probably even
closer and more constant than those that existed between the great
master and the more illustrious Frederick the Wise of Saxony,
hitherto regarded as his chief patron. With reference to the
portraits chosen for this book, the one which appears as frontispiece
is from a woodcut by Ostendorfer, in the British Museum, executed
in commemoration of Frederick’s triumphs at the head of the Imperial
Forces, and now reproduced for the first time. The picture which
faces p. 241 is in the private collection of the Grand Duke of Hesse-

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

492

Darmstadt, and has recently been identified by Herr Peltzer as a
missing portrait, by Albrecht Durer, of Frederick in youth, painted
most probably about 1499 or 1500, and showing in the background
the earliest known representation of the Castle of Heidelberg.
There seems little doubt that it is a genuine presentment of the
Palsgrave ; but its ascription to Durer is not accepted by all
authorities. The portrait facing p. 372 is from a drawing by Albrecht
Durer now in the British Museum, being a sketch for the medal
struck at Nuremberg in 1523, in commemoration of Frederick's
assumption of the dignity of ‘ Locumtenens C^saris Majestatis.’

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

3 (p. 29). This bath is also mentioned at Mechlin and at
Brussels. ‘ The bathing together of men and women, skin-bare, is
here reckoned as innocent as is, with us, a visit to church,’ writes
Pero Tafur, who describes himself elsewhere as throwing coins into
the baths for the ladies to fish up in their mouths. Both Germans
and Netherlanders were addicted to bathing. ‘ Do you wish to be
merry? Go to the bath,’ says an old German proverb. If a man
had nothing better to do he would order a hot bath and sit in it,
perhaps for twenty-four hours, with his wife or a friend, emptying
a cask of wine. The poetess, Clara Hatzlerin, sets the bath above all
other pleasures : Bathing is as clean a passion as can be upon
earth. Has a man served lovely women in the joust ? Has he borne
him well in the lists? Has he made pilgrimage or afar journey?
Still, before all joys he will set the bath.’ {JLtederbuch?i Even in
later centuries the manners of Central Europe were in this respect
still primitive. When passing through the Tyrol in 1606, the
Marchese Giustmiani leaned against the wall of his inn to admire the
view. Suddenly a door opened, and out came two damsels with no
clothing save their floating hair, who strolled down to the lake and
took a leisurely bath. (Bizoni.) Compare also Hans von Schwein-
ichen’s experiences {supra^ p. 41 1), and the many accounts of fashion-
able watering-places, such as Baden.

4 (P‘ 30)- The horrors of the Channel passage are the constant
theme of foreign visitors. Eustache Deschamps wrote piteously :

Adieu, molz liz, adieu, piteux regars
Adieu pain fres que Ton souloit trouver ;

II me convient porter honeur aux lars,

Aux commutres qui ne font que siffler ;

II me convient aux et becuit nffler,

Et chevauchier un penlleux cheval ;

Voirre n’aray ne tasse, et pour tnnquer
Desor me faut boire k un vermical.

The sea was no fit place for a nobleman, complained Charles of
Orleans, for thereon * il y a danger et perdicion de vie, et dieu sceit

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 493

quelle piti^ quant il feit tounnente, et si est la malaAir- de la mer
forte k endurer k plusieurs gens.’ The French, he adds, preferred
very sensibly to fight on land, a statement which is confirmed by the
report of the eye-witness of Agincourt, that the French nobles who
were taken prisoner considered their sufferings on the day of the
battle not to have exceeded their sufferings on the passage to England,
(Cf. Dibat des Hiraulx, and BattU of Agincourt, Nicolas.) See also
the delightful poem on the Pilgrinas’ Sea- Voyage (E.E.T.S. voL xxv.)
that begins :

Men may leve alle gamys

That saylen to seynt Jamys,

Ffor many a man bit gramys.

When they begyn to sayle.

The Manor of Archer’s Court, near Dover, was possessed upon the
remarkable condition that the owner or owners ‘should hold the
King’s head when he passes to Calais, and by the working of the sea
should be obliged to vomit.’ {Villare Cantianum, Cf. Rye’s nc^es to
Journals of Dukes of Wurtemderg.) Nor were nausea and shipwreck
the only drawbacks of a voyage. One should be careful, wrote
Giacomo Fantuzzi, to take off one’s spurs, as the shipmen were in the
habit of removing them from those who were sick and incapable* It
was wise, indeed, to avoid these sailors, as, besides being thieves, they
were also covered with vermin. (Notes on Travel. Cf. Aventures
dHun Grand Seigneur Itahen, Rodocanachi.) Curious ceremonies were
performed to procure favourable weather. ‘To obtain a wind, my
Lord Secretary, with devout and humble heart, pledged and bent
silver to the most blessed and glorious Virgin, Mary Eton,
{Journal of Beckingtotis Embassy^ 1442, Nicolas.) When overtaken
by a storm, the captain of a pilgrim galley filled a cap with peas, and
made each passenger draw one. The unfortunate individual who
drew a black pea was compelled, willy-nilly, to promise, and eventually
perform, a pilgrimage to Compostella. (Cf Rohricht.) Erasmus, in
ins colloquy of The Shipwreck^ describes the passengers as ‘ adcwing
the Sea, throwing Oyl into it, and flattering it, as if it had been some
incensed Prince.’ ‘Whoso would leam to pray, let him go on a
ship,’ said a German proverb.

5 (P* 31)* Even the skill of the sailor was not admitted by Cap-
grave in his account of Henry VI. ’s navy. ‘ Our enemies laugh at us.
They say, “ Take off the ship from your precious money, and stamp a
sheep upon it to signify your sheepish minds.” We, who used to be
conquerors of all nations, are now conquered by all. The men of old
used to say that the sea was England’s wall, and now our enemies
have got upon the wall ; what, think you, they will do to the defence-
less inhabitants ? Because this business hats been neglected for so
many years it now happens that ships are scanty, and ssulors also few,
and such as we have unskilled for want of exercise. May God take

494 the bohemian ULYSSES

away our reproach, and raise up a spirit of bravery in our nation 1 *
{De Illust Henricis,) See also the Libel of English Policy \

Where bene cure shippes? wh^^e bene cure swerdes become?

Owre enmyes bid for the shippe sette a shepe.

Allas ! oure reule halteth, hit is benome ;

Who dare weel say that lordeshyppe shulde take kepe?

(PoliHcal Songs t II.)

Sir John Fortescue, writing at the very moment of the Bohemian
embassy, strikes a curiously modem note in regard to the ‘ kepynge
off the sea’ : ‘And though we have not alwey werre vppon the see,
yet it shalbe nescessarie that the kynge have* always some fiioute
apon the see, ffor the repressynge off rovers, savynge off owre
marchauntes, owre fiishers, and the dwellers vppon owre costes ; and
that the kynge kepe alway some grete and myghty vessels, ffor the
brekynge off an armye when any shall be made ayen hym apon the
see. Ffor thanne it shall be too late to do make such vessailles.
And yet with owt thaym all the k5mges navey shall not suffice to
horde with carrikkes and other grete vessailles, nor yet to mowe
breke a mighty ffioute gadered off purpose.’ {The Governance oj
England.)

6 (p. 39). The maravighoso silentio that prevailed at English
banquets is mentioned m the Relation of England. Harrison also
speaks of ‘ the great silence that is used at the tables of the honour-
able and wiser sort, generallie over all the realme (albeit that too
much deserveth no comendation, for it belongeth to gests neither to
be muti nor loquaces),’ ‘ Ils dinent copieusement et ne parlent point,’
wrote a visitor in 1698. {Voyages Historiques.) Yet a century later,
Arthur Young criticised the taciturnity of the French in comparison
with his own countrymen. Indeed, England was by no means alone
in this matter : ‘Taciturnity entre viandes est n^cessaire,’ declared a
French teacher of manners in the thirteenth century ; ‘ Certes la
langue laquelle est en tout temps encline de court k pdchy, et plus
pyrilleusement est relaschye de parler quant par superfluity de manger
seroit emflambye.’ {Civilitd of Hugues de Saint Victor in the Miroir
hystorial of Jean de Vignay.) Even Erasmus, though he does not
recommend dumbness for men, decides that silence at meals adorns
women and, still more, the young. {De Civilitate Morum. Cf.
Franklin.)

7 (p. 41). According to William Harrison, the London gardens
did not come to full perfection till the sixteenth century : ‘ If you look
into our -gardens annexed to our houses, how wonderfulhe is their
beautie increased, not onelie with fioures and varietie of curious and
costlie workmanship, but also with rare and medicmable hearbes
sought up in the land within these fortie yeares ; so that in comparison

this present, the ancient gardens were but dunghills and laistowes
to such as, did possess them.’ Roger Ascham does not allow even

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 49S

these later marvels to pass without criticism. In Germany, he writes,
^ye shall see round about the walls of every city, half a mile compass
from the walls, gardens full of herbs and roots, whereby the cities most
part do live. No herb is stolen, such justice is exercised. If only
London would use, about the void places of the city, these gardens
full of herbs, and if it were but to serve the strangers that would live
with these herbs, beside a multitude whom need, covetousness or
temperance would in few years bring to the same, all England should
have victuals better cheap.’

8 (p. 41). ‘Every one who makes a tour in the island will soon
become aware of this great wealth ... for there is no small inn-
keeper, however poor and humble he may be, who does not serve his
table with silver dishes and drinking cups ; and no one, who has not
in his house silver plate to the amount of at least ;£ioo sterling, which
is equivalent to 500 golden crowns with us, is considered by the
English to be a person of any consequence. But above all are their
riches displayed in the church treasures ; for there is not a parish
church in the kingdom so mean as not to possess crucifixes, candle-
sticks, censers, and cups of silver.’ {Relation of England^ ‘There are
few,’ wrote Polydore Vergil, ‘ whose tables are not daily provided with
spoons, cups, and a salt-cellar of silver.’ This abundance of the
precious metals arose from the fact that no foreigner was allowed to
take more than the value of twenty crowns in money or plate out of the
country. If he had wealth to carry away, he was compelled to convert
it into merchandise, since all the gold and silver was forcibly kept on
English soil, and every departing stranger, unless an ambassador, was
rigorously searched. ‘ It is no wonder,’ said the English Herald with
satisfaction, ‘that there should be great riches of gold and silver in
England, since they are constantly imported and it is not permitted
to carry them away.’ {Dibaf des Heraulx.)

9 (p, 42). According to his Household Ordinances, Edward IV.
had at this time twenty-six Chaplains and Clerks of the Chapel, ‘ men
of worshipp, endowed with vertuuse morall and speculati^ as of theyre
musike, shewing m descant, dene voysed, well releesed and pro-
nouncynge, eloquent in reding, sufficiaunt in organes pleyyng, and
modestiall in all other manner of behaving’ ; also eight Children of
Chapel taught by the ‘ maistyr of songes ’ : ‘ and he to drawe these
chyldren ... in songe, organes, or suche other vertuous thinges.’
(Cf. Fumivall, E.E.T.S. voL xxxii.) England seems to have been con-
sidered a musical nation by foreigners :

* Farewell, with glorious victory,

Blessid Inglond, fal of mdody ;

Thou may be deped of Angel nature;

Thou servist God so with bysy cure,*

exclaimed the servants of the Emperor Sigismund on their dep^tnre.
(Cf, Capgrave.) And a century later Perlin wrote : ‘ Les Anglais • * ^

496 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

sont joyeux et ayment fort la musique ; car ne sgauroit estre si petite
esglise en laquelle on ne chante de musique.’ Hentzner pays a more
doubtful compliment : ‘ The English excel in dancing and music, for
they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French.
. . . They are vastly fond of great noises that fill the air, such as the
firing of cannon, drums and the ringing of bells ; so that in London it
is common for a number of them, that have got a glass in their heads,
to go into some belfry and ring the bells for hours together for the
sake of exercise.’

lo (p. 42). ‘ In this country there are goddess girls, divinely fair,

suasive and persuadable. And they have a habit, too, which is praise-
worthy beyond description. Wherever you arrive you are received
with a kiss. When you leave you carry a kiss with you. You come
back again, and so does the kiss. They come to see you and drink
your health in kisses. They go away and you share the spoil of
kisses. In fact, whomsoever you meet, there are kisses in plenty, and
wherever you go, the world is full of kisses waiting.’ (Letter of
Erasmus to Fausto Andrelini, 1499.) There is plenty of evidence to
bear out these statements of Rozmital and Erasmus. Niklas Poppel
(1470) likens England roundly to the Venusberg, seeing that in
every town and inn he found the most lovely ladies willing to be
kissed : ‘ They like the Germans, jest with them gladly and give them
friendly kisses. This they do openly in the church, in the street,
everywhere.’ (Cf. Krone.) Laonicus Chalcondyles thinks the English
habits ‘ excessively simple,’ since in every house and in every street
the wives and daughters are willing to be kissed. (^De Rebus Turcicis^
cited by Nichols in his Epistles of Erasmus^ A Venetian Report of
1512 describes with zest this strange custom of London ; ‘When they
walk in the street, if they meet a friend, they take his hand and
kiss him full on the mouth, and go into some tavern and eat with him.
And their people do not take it ill. And they are most beautiful
ladies, and most pleasant.’ {Costumi di Londra^ ‘They receive
guests with bare head and bended knee, and therewith a kiss
when it is a woman, yet without any wantonness,’ writes Sebastian
Franck, and Nicander Nucius repeats the tale with the prim
comment : ‘ to themselves they appear by no means indecent.’
Samuel Kiechel, practical as ever, instructs his readers in the art
of receiving these charming advances ; for when a guest is thus
made welcome (‘ wullkom heist, as it is called in their tongue ’), by a
lady, ‘ he does well to take her in his arms and to kiss her, which
is the custom of the country, and whoso does it not is looked
upon as ignorant and ill-bred.’ Nicolaus Bethlen, who came to
England in the reign of Charles IL, expounds the correct method
as a kiss on ‘ the end of the mouth,’ and describes the sad blunder
into which he fell. ‘We kissed the girls, but not the married
women, which gave offence; but Duval . . . taught us manners.
We had to start with kissing the hostess, and then the others

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 497

according to seniority as they stood, finishing up with the girls.
After dinner the hostess was kissed again. (Cf. Szamota.) Even
Giordano Bruno regrets the ‘alluring lips' of ‘the fair and gracious
nymphs of England.’ {Cena de la Ceneri,) Nor was the fashion
neglected in literature, for in the Cent Nouvelles Nmvelles^ written
at the Court of Burgundy not long before the visit of Rtmnital,
the young Englishman ‘Jehan Stocton’ opens his suit to the land-
lady with this excuse: ‘Lors s’approucha d’elle, et luy requbt
ung baiser, dont les dames et damoiselles du dist pays d’Angleterre
sent asses liberales de Taccorder.' (Nouvelle LXIL) In fact, to
foreign eyes English women had many advantages. ‘As their
beauty, so also their prerogatives are the greatest of any nation/
declared Heylyn ; ‘neither so servilely submisse as the French,
nor so jealously guarded as the Italian ; but keeping so true a
decorum, that England, as it is tearmed the Purgatory of Servants
and the Hell of Horses, so it is acknowledged the Paradise
Women. And it is a common by- word among the Italians, that
if there were a bridge built over the narrow seas, all the women
of Europe would runne into Eni:land. For here they have the upper
hand in the streets ; the upper place at the table . . . [and like]
priviledges wherewith other women are not acquainted.'

The custom of a kiss for greeting seems, however, to have become
increasingly common all over Europe. Thus, in the sixteenth century,
Henri Estienne writes : ‘ Si mademoiselle est en I’^glise, . . , et
arrive quelque gentillastre, il faut (pour entretenir les coustumes de
noblesse) qu’elle se l^ve parmi tout le peuple, et qu'elle le baise bee
h bee.' Again ; ‘ Celuy qui entre en un lieu oh se trouve une grande
assembl^e de dames ou demoiselles, ne baise pas seulement celle
ou celles qu’il connait, mais par compagnie toutes les autres,
lesquelles que peut-€tre il n'aura jamais vues . . . et tant s'en faut
que cette icoustume commence k s'abolir, qu’au contraire elle est
en vogue plus que jamais.' Montane notices the growing fashion
with disapproval. ‘Things farrefetcht and dearly bought are good
for Ladyes. It is the deare price makes viands savour the better.
See but how the form of salutations . • . doth by its facility
bastardize the grace of kisses ... It is an unpleasing and
injurious custome unto Ladies, that they must afford their lips to
any man that hath but three Lackies following him, how unhand-
some and lothsome soever he be. Nor do we our selves gaine
much by it : for as the world is divided into foure parts, so
for foure faire ones, we must kiss fiftie foule : and to a nice
and tender stomack, as are those of mine age, one ill kisse doth
surpay one good.' (JEssayes,) The Church also did not sanction
such levities. ‘It becometh nat,' writes Whytford sternly, ‘the
persones religious to folowe the manor of secular persones, that
in theyr congresses and commune metyngs or departyngs done
use to kysse, take hands, or such other touchings, that good religious

498 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

persones shulde utterly avoyde.’ {Pype of Perfection^ 1532.) On
the other hand, the ceremony was much used in royal circles,
and Rozmital, as will be seen, was greeted in this manner by
Queen Charlotte of France. Brantdme relates that the Cardinal
of Lorraine ‘allant trouver Mme. la duchesse de Savoie en sa
chambre pour la saluer, et s’approchant d’elle, elle, qui estoit la
mesme arrogance du monde, luy presenta la main pour la baiser.
M. le Cardinal, impatient de cet affront, s’approcha pour la baiser
k la bouche, et elle de reculer. Lui, perdant patience et s’approchant
de plus pr^s encore d’elle, la prend par la teste et, en ddpit d'elle,
la baise deux ou trois fois : “ Comment,” dit il, “ est-ce k moi k qui
il faut user de cette mine et fagon ? Je baise bien la Reyne ma
maitresse, qui est la plus grande reyne du monde, et vous je ne
vous baiserais pas, qui n’estes qu’une petite duchesse crott^e.”’
{Recueil des Dames.) The fashion lasted on the Continent long
after it had fallen into disrepute in England, Spain, indeed, being
always an exception, since the Spaniards (writes Swinburne) were
of so combustible a constitution that ‘the custom of embracing
persons of the other sex, which is used on many occasions by
foreigners, sets them all on fire.’ They would as soon adopt the
habits of Diderot’s Island as suffer any man to give their ladies a kiss.

II (p. 44). These were the famous sheep which were so soon to
become the theme of a whole literature of anguish and complaint
(cf. many volumes of the E.E.T.S., etc.), headed by the striking
indictment in More’s Utopia : ‘ Shepe, that were wont to be so myke
and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saie, be become
so great e devowerers, and so wylde, that they, eate up and swallow
down the very men them selfes. They consume, destroy, and
devoure hole fields, howses, and cities.’ The owners of the land turn
all to pasture : ‘ they throw downe houses ; they plucke downe
townes ; and leave nothing stondynge but only the churche, to make
of it a shepehowse.’ As for the husbandmen : ‘ by howke or crooke,
they must needes departe awaye, pore, sylie, wretched soules. . . .
Awaye they trudge, I say, out of their knowen and accustomed
howses, fynding no places to rest in.’ The epigram in Bastard’s
Ckrestoleros tells the same story :

Sheepe have eate vp our medows and our downes,

Our come, our wood, whole villages and townes,

Yea, they have eate vp many wealthy men,

Besides widowes and orphane children,

Besides our statutes and our iron lawes,

Which they have swallowed down into their maws.

Till now I thought the proverbe did but jest.

Which said ' a blacke sheepe was a biting beast ’

[Ballads from MSS., vol L)

Cf. also Now-a-dayes^ and other ballads. ‘What shepe ground
scapeth these caterpyllers of the commune weale ? ’ wrote Becon.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 499

‘ Howe swarme they wyth aboundaunce of flockes of shepe ? and yet
when was wool ever so dere, or mutton of so great price?
These gredy woulves and comberous cormerauntes, will eyther sell
theyr woll and theyr shepe at theyr own pryce or els they wyll sell
none.’ of Joy.)

12 (p. 45 )- ‘ Godale’ was the usual French rendering of the word,

‘ Allez boire vostre godale, allez,’ says Froissart. If wine and oil
are lacking to England, writes Sir John Fortescue, ^ God hathe sent
us agenwarde ryght goode ale and myghty drynke for the comune
people.’ {Tract 07 i the Com 7 nodities of England:^ And compare
the old song, ‘Bryngus in good ale’ (E.E.T.S., vol. xxxiL), which
enumerates and rejects every other possible article of food or drink.
Harrison, indeed, writes of ale as ‘ sometime our onelie^ but now
taken with manie for old and sickmens drinke,’ being ‘more thicke,
fulsome, and of no such continuance ’ as beer. ‘ But what for that ? ’
he adds : ‘ Certes I know some aleknights so much addicted there-
unto, that they will not cease from morow until even to visit the
same.’ Boorde takes a different view : ‘ Ale for an Englyssheman
is a naturall drinke ... it maketh a man stronge ’ ; while ‘ here ’ is
much used to the * detriment of many Englisshe men.’

13 (P- 45)* This is the judgment of Froissart. Eustache
Deschamps writes even more strongly :

Visage d‘Ange portez; mais la pens^

De diable est en vous toudis sortissans,

A Lucifer par orgueil coiupar^e ....

[De la prophicie Merlin sur la destruction dAngleterre qui dotf brief adveair.

Reue en paon et parole de gay,

Cuer de h^vre mis en corps de lion,

Gueule k serpent, s6jour de pap^ay,

Chi^vre gratant, de chien condicion. . . .

Car en toy n’a que vanacion,

Envie, orgueil, convoitise et mesdis,

Sanz cramdre Dieu, sanz bonne affection,

Lasches, couars, r^erdans et faillis.

{Vision prophitigue de FAngleUrre,)

The German traveller, Niklas Poppel, compares the English to
Poles for ostentation, thievishness and .ill-breeding ; to Hungarians
for mad cruelty ; and to Lombards for avarice. ‘ Angli, perfidi,
inflati, feri, contemptores, stolidi, amentes, inertes, inhospitales,
immanes,’ says Scaliger. ‘ Inconstant, rash, vain-glorious, light and
deceiving,’ writes Van Meteren, ‘and very suspicious, especially of
foreigners whom they despise.’ (Cf. Rye’s notes to Journals oj
Dukes of Wurtemberg) ‘ Fier et superbe,’ declares Payen, ‘et si fort
adonne au larcin que ne pouvant satisfaire sur la terre k ses mauvaises
inclinations, il monte en mer, ecume et pyrate de tous costez.’
Estienne Perlin speaks with the utmost bitterness : ‘ Et fault noter

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

500

qu’en ce Royaume taftt excellent^ il n’y a nul Ordre comme jay diet.
Les gens sont resprouves et du tout ennemis de bonnes meurs et
des bonnes lettres. On peult dire des Angloys ny en la guerre ilz
ne sont fors, ny en la paix ils ne sont fiddles, et comme diet
TEspagnol, Angleterre bonne terre male gente. ... Le peuple
fier et seditieux et de mauvaise conscience, et infidelle i leur
parole, comme il est appart par experience. Ces vilains Ik hayent
toute sorte d’estrangers, et jagois qu’ilz soyent en bonne terre et
bonne centred . . . sont michans et addonnds k tout vent.’ As for
the foreign Ambassadors, they never cease in their complaints of ‘ les
humeurs’ of the people of London, who throw stones at their
windows, and pelt their children and themselves.

Some of the critics seek and find strange causes for these character-
istics. It is all because ‘ these islandeis eat so much beef, and are
afraid of nobody,’ says the Portuguese Pero Nino, a statement that
recalls Sir William Forrest’s Pleasaunt Poesye of Princelie Practise :

Owre Englische nature cannot lyve by Rooatis,
by water, herbys or suche beggerye baggage
that may well serve for vile owtelandische Crooatis :
geeve Englische men meate after their olde usage,

Beeif, Mutton, Veale, to cheare their courage;
and then I dare to this byll sett my hande ;
they shall defende this owre noble Englande.

‘ Soit pour estre insulaires ou pour tenir ce naturel de la marine, ou
pour en estre les moeurs corrompus,’ suggests Simon Renard. (Pafzers
d^Etat de Granvelle^ t. iv.) It seems more probable, however, that
(at least in the time of Rozmital) much of this national antagonism
arose from commercial jealousy. For already in 1461, five years
before the arrival of the Bohemians, Edward IV. had been compelled
to prohibit the importation of innumerable foreign goods, on account
of the vehement complaints of his subjects, who were being undersold
by their continental rivals. And only a few years later violent
tumults were to arise in London against the unceasing immigration
of aliens. Great irritation was also caused by that custom of searching
travellers for gold of which Erasmus, among others, complains so
bitterly. ‘ It was done by the chie^ I had almost written thief, of the
port (a praefecto, pene dixeram a praedone, literis),’ he writes on one
occasion ; and on another, ‘ I often wonder that such scoundrels are
tolerated by the English Government, to the great annoyance of those
who visit the country, and the greatest discredit of the whole island,
as every traveller carries home the story of the inhuman reception he
has met with, and other people form an estimate of the nation by the
acts of these robbers.’ (Letter to Ammonius, 1514.) The ‘ submissive
knee’ to which Schaschek alludes so slightingly was presumably the
‘ bended knee ’ of salutation mentioned by Sebastian Munster.

14 (p. 48). These are the famous ‘ bamacle-byrdes,’ so beloved

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 501

by the epicures of the Middle Ages. ‘These animals they eat on
fast days without scruple,’ writes Nicander Nucius, who describes them
as a kind of fish, with the wings, beaks, and feet of a duck ‘ These*
the fishermen affirm, that they draw up from the rocks m the recesses
of the sea. . . . And the animals being killed there in the water, the
blood loses its crimson hue, and becomes the colour of water.

And they have no voice, hut only croak with volubility.’ The origin
of the myth seems, in fact, to have been a desire to find a new food
widi which to break the monotony of fast days. ‘ II est mis au rang
des poissons,’ explains Nicolas de Bonnefons in his cookery book, ‘k
cause qu’il a le sang froid, qui est la seule cause qui nous fait faire la
distinction des alimens pour les jours gras ou les maigres,’ {Delices de
la Campagne, 1655. Cf. Franklin.) The Church, it is true, expressly
denied the penitential character of the dish ; but no one paid any
attention to the fact, and even the highest ecclesiastics devoured the
food with avidity. Thus the Bishop of Nantes himself affirmed to
Beatis that on the rotting pine masts of ships sunk in ocean waters
were bom certain birds called anavecke^ bamatk and zcpponi : ‘ these
stick to the said masts by their beaks till they have made the feathers
with which they fly, when they come out of the water and live upon
the earth ; the which is contrary to philosophy, which declares thaf
no animal that has lungs can live without air. In these parts there
are infinite numbers of them, and of the largest size, whence experience
contradicts natural reason.’ In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the belief still flourished. Sir Kenelm Digby, for one, held
firmly to the tradition. ‘ He had enlarged,’ says Lady Fanshawe,
when describing the hero’s conversation, ‘somewhat more in extra-
ordinary stories than might be averred, and all of them passed with
great applause and wonder of the French then at table ; but the
concluding 'one was, that barnacles, a bird in Jersey, was first a
shell-fish in appearance, and from that, sticking upon old wood,
became in time a bird. After some consideration, they unanimously
burst out into laughter, believing it altogether felse ; and, to say the
truth, it was the only thing true he had discoursed with them ; that
was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts,
and a very fine-bred gentleman J (Memoirs.) In the common versicm
of the legend, however, the birds were geese, and grew on trees in
the Orkney Islands (cf. .^Eneas Sylvius, Gerarde, and many others).
In Belle Forest’s edition of Munster’s Cosmo^apUe (1575) is
an agreeable picture of the ‘tree-goslings ’ swimming away from the
boughs on which they had grown ‘as fruit enveloped in leaves.’ It
was under this form that the tradition became a popular simile for
satire (cf. Butler, Cleveland, etc.). It is interesting to learn that
Kozmital and bis company liked the ‘duck birds,’ as, according to
Boorde, one of the chief characteristics of Bohemians is that ‘ they do
love no Duckes nor Malardes.’ Buffon, moreover, declared the
creatures’ flesh to be so black, dry, hard and nasty, that it was a fit

S02 THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

‘ food for mortification.^ We may suppose that they were kin to
Lawrens Andre we^s ‘ Pecocke of the Se/ who resembled his terrestrial
brother in the splendour of his upper portions, but whose ‘nether
body is fisshe.’

15 (p. 62). Sir John Fortescue, who was at this very moment
a resident in France with his pupil, Prince Edward of Lancaster,
agrees with the Bohemians as to the fertility of the country, but gives
a gloomy account of the state of its inhabitants. These, he declares,
are ‘so impoverysshid and distroyed, that thai mowe unneth leve.
Thai drinken water, thai eyten apples, with brede right browne made
of rye ; thai eyten no fiesshe but yf it be right seldom a little larde,
or of the entrales and heydes of bestis slayn for the nobles and
marchauntes of the lande. Thai weren no wolen, but yf it be a
pouere cote undir thair uttermest gamement, made of grete caunvas,
and callid a ffokke. Thair hausyn beth of lyke caunvas, and passyn
not thair kne, wherfore thai beth gartered and ther theis bare. Thair
wyfes and childeren gone bare fote. . . . Thai gon crokyd, and ben
feble, not able to fight, nor to defende the realme ; nor thai have
wepen, nor money to bie thaim wepen with all. But verely thai liven
in the most extreme povertie and miserie, and yet dwellyn thai m
the most fertile reaum of the worlde.’ How different, he continues,
is the happy state of England, where the people never drink water
except for penance ; eat every manner of flesh and fish ; are clothed
throughout in good woollens ; and are provided with all sorts of house-
hold goods. {Governance of England.')

16 (p. 66) This tenacity would seem to imply that they were of
the British breed of bull- dog, which had long been preferred in Italy.
When the bull was very unruly, wrote Clarendon, the king sent for
the Spanish dogs, and if these could not master him, and were them-
selves killed, as frequently happened, he called for the English
mastiffs . ‘ of which they seldom turn out above one at a time, and he
rarely misses taking the bull, and holding him by the nose, till men
run in.’ {Life^ ‘ Quand les taureaux se ddfendent trop longtemps,’
says Mme. d’Aulnoy, ‘Ton am^ne les dogues d’Angleterre. Ils ne
sont pas si grands que ceux que Ton voit d'ordinaire ; dest une race
semblable k ceux que les espagnols amenaient aux Indes lorsqu’ils
en firent la conqu6te, mais si forts que quand une fois ils tiennent une
goulde ils ne lichent point, et ils se laisseraient plut6t couper par
morceaux,’ The chief features of these early bull-fights was the
noble birth and frequent death of the combatants. In the great
Spanish feast held in the Colosseum at Rome in 1332, eleven bulls
and eighteen nobles of the highest families were killed (Gibbon,
ch. Ixxi.), and, even in later and less brutal days, deaths were common.
Lord Clarendon himself saw on one day four or five champions
killed, besides many others ‘perpetually maimed.’ ‘C’est une
terrible beante que cette f6te,’ wrote Madame de Villars : ‘ quand les
chevaux sont tu6s, il faut que les seigneurs combattent k pied, I’dp^e

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 503

i la main, contre ces b^tes furieuses.’ According to Laurent Vital,
who gives a long description of a bull-fight under Charles V., th&
spears then in common use were ‘ des gaules de dix pieds de long
qui ont au bout une pointe de fer bien poindante comme une aleime,’
But Madame d’Aulnoy describes the ‘rejones or garrochions^ as
‘ lances made of very dry fir, about four or five foot long, painted and
gilt, and the ironwork very well polished.’ Van Aarssens speaks of
‘little javelins (which for their better support through the mr are
winged with red paper),’

The variations in the entertainments were sometimes remarkabk.
See, for instance, Erasmus’ accounts of the buU-feasts which he
witnessed in Italy. One in the piazza at Siena he describes as a last
remnant of ancient Paganism and license : ‘ The bull was driven
forth, and at once assailed by machines which were constructed of
wooden beams, and made in the likeness of a ram, a tortoise, or some
other living animal ; while within were the men who worked the
machines. These having duly pulled the ropes, the tortoise opened
its mouth in a wide grin, gaped, rattled its jaws, twisted its neck
hither and thither, thureatening horrible things to the bull, and
seeming as though about to devour it.’ The poor brute was petrified
with terror, to the great joy of the populace. {Supputatio errorum
Bedes, Cf. Nolhac, Erasme en Halted Again, in R(Mne, Erasmus
describes a bull-fight in which the animal was baited in every possible
manner by a personage ‘sinistram manum habens toga obvolutam,
dextra gladium gestans.’ (Answer to Corsi. Cf. Ibid^ Compare
also Rabelais’ descriptions in his account of ‘ La Sciomackie et FesUns
faits cL Rome^ (Lyons, 1549)-

17 (p. 87), Scallop shells — ‘Shelles of Galice,’ Piers Plowman
calls them— were the special tokens of St. James, gathered by his
worshippers on the shores that had welcomed his mutilated body.
Felix Fabri describes how, after Mass in the femous Cathedral, the
Sion-pilgrims hired a ship: ‘And they fered forth upon the sea;
and there is an island of St. Michael, and one of St, Mary, and one
of Jesus Christ, and one of St. George, and one of St. Andrew . . .
and they found there on the sea-shore many rare shells great and
small, and they took them on their hats and cloaks as the James-
pilgrims do, and stayed the night at St. MichaeU {Die Gessidieke
Pilgerfahrt, given by Habler.) In Erasmus’ colloquy of Tke PU-
Ogygyus, who has just returned from Compostella, pn^sses
to have received his shell from the Saint himself. None the less
Menedemus mocks at him. ‘ I pray you, what araye is this that
you be in ; me thynke that you be clothyd with cockle shelles, and
be laden on every side with bruches of lead and tynne. And you
be pretely gamyshed with wrethes of strawe, and your arme is full
of, snakes egges.’ Hall describes a masquerade at the Court of
Henry VIII., in which Lord Dorset and Sir Thomas Bcdeyn,
appeared like ‘two pilgrims from sainct lames. . . . their taberdes

THE BOHEMIAN ULYSSES

504

hattes and trappers set with scaloppe schelles of fyne golde and
strippes of black velvet, every strip set with a scalop shell ; their
servauntes all in blacke Satyn, with scalop shelles of gold in their
breastes.’

18 (p. 92). Death bowlings were a very widespread custom, and
loved equally by Moors and Irishmen. ‘ In all these countreys,*
writes Boorde of the Spanish peninsula, ‘ yf any man, or woman, or
chylde, do dye, at theyr burying, and many other tymes after that
they be buryed, they wyl make an exclamacyon, saying, “why
dydest thou dye ? haddest not thou good freendes ? myghtyst
not thou have had golde and sylver, and ryches and good
clothynge ? for why diddest thou dye ? ’* crying and clatrying many
suche folysh wordes ; and commonly every day they wyll br5mg
to church a cloth, or a pilo carpit, and cast over the grave, and
set over it, bread, wyne, and candyllyght ,• and then they wyll pray,
and make suche a foolyshe exclamacion, as I sayd afore, that al the
church shall rynge ; this wyll they doe although theyr freendes dyed
vii. yere before ; and this foolysh vse is vsed in Bisca, Castyle,
Spayne, Aragon, and Navaerre.* And here again appears the like-
ness between Wales and Spain, for in Welsh lands, ‘yf any of
theyr frendes do dye, and whan they shall be buried and put in to
the grave, in certayne places they wyl cry out, making an exclama-
cion, and sayeing, “ O venit 1 ” that is to saye, “ O swetynge I why
dost thou dye ? thou shalt not go from us ! ” and will pul away the
corse, sayeing, “ Venit 1 we wyl die with the, or els thou shalt tary
with vs ! ** wyth many other foolyshe wordes, as the Castilions and
the Spaniardes do say and do at the burieng of theyr frendes.^
Hentzner describes the practice in Languedoc.

19 (p. Ill), *Deux grands Bois de Licome,* notes Payen ot
these two treasures of Venice ; ‘le masle est d*une couleur qui
n’est pas tout-h-fait rouge, et» la femelle est blanche,* They ‘ are
plain and best accord with those of the Indian ass,’ wrote Sir
Thomas Browne, ‘ Unicorn’s ’ horns were immensely valued at this
time both as ornaments and as antidote against poisoning. The
best kind (narwhal or rhinoceros) sold for more than its weight in
gold, and the Princes of Europe vie^ with one another in the length
and value of their specimens. Charles the Bold, with his usual
lavishness, displayed no less than six horns on the occasion of his
banquet to the Emperor at Treves (see su^ra^ p, 143), of which two
were eight feet long, two six feet long, and two five feet long : * and
they were beyond price.’ {Speierische Chronik ) Benvenuto Cellini
tells of one — ‘the finest ever seen, which had cost seventeen
thousand ducats of the Camera ’ — ^for which, at the Pope’s command,
he made a design, ‘ the finest thing imaginable, modelled half on a
horse and half on a stag, with a very fine mane and other adom-
msentS,’ The horn at Saint Denis is described by Coryat as being
‘about three yardes high, even so high that I could hardly reach

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 505

to the top of it,’ and by Sir Thomas Browne as having ‘wreatfcy
spires and cochleary turnings.’ The Prince of Anhalt saw two at
Windsor ‘ well-nigh four ells long.’ {Itinerary, 1 596.) And Hentzncr
was shown one ‘ above eight spans and a half in length, valued at
above 100,000 golden pounds.’ Their chief popularity was no doubt
owing to their supposed faculty of discovering poison in such dishes
as they touched by instantly sweating blood—a superstition that
died hard. Even in the days of Sir Thomas Browne it stiH
flourished. ^ With what security a man may rely on this remedy,
he remarks caustically, ‘ the mistress of fools hath already instructed
some, and to wisdom (which is never too wise to learn) it is not
too late to consider.’ In this matter, indeed, the seventeenth century
was divided by no wide gulf from the century in which Pliny wrote :
‘the most fell and furious beast of all others, is the licome or
monoceros : his bodie resembleth an horse, his head a stagge, his
feet an elephant, his taile a bore ; he loweth after an hideous manner ;
one blacke home he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out
two cubits in length ; by report this wild beast cannot possibly be
caught alive.? (Natural} Historie^ tr. by Philemon Holland, 1601.)

20 (p. 115)- The fact that Schaschek specially mentions this
fufnaTdum shows that chimneys were still uncommon and regarded
as a luxury. In Venice and Padua, indeed, they were alre^y of
long standing, as appears from Viliam’s description of the earthquake
of 1347 , when many fumajuoli were thrown down. But when in
that same century Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, visited
Rome, he found no such luxuries : ‘because chimneys were not
then used in Rome, but they all made fires in the middle of the
house on the floor, and they made these fires in pots (cassom)
filled with earth.’ Francesco, ‘not thinking this comfortable,’
fetched workmen from Padua and had chimneys erected. ( Ckromcim
Patavinum^ Muratori, vol. xvii., and cf. Beckmann.) The doctor
Hippolyt Guarinonius paints in lively colours the contrast between
the Italian chimneys and his own beloved German stoves. ‘ Hereby
we may know what to think of these Italian chimneys, wherein in
the winter-time they light their fires : they sit round, each one
with iron tongs in his hand, and keep up such a ceaseless poking,
pushing, stirring, blowing, making as much business of the fire
as though many high and important matters hung thereon ; and
at best one man has a warm foot and a cold back, another a
warm hand and a cold stomach, a third dim, reddened, and often
weeping eyes therefrom ; and the while one warms himself he can
neither do nor arrange aught else. And albeit they laugh at the
German stoves, yet when they come to one, none can tear them
away.’ (Grezvel der Verwustung'.) The methods of cleaning were
sometimes strange. Thus, in the year 1503 the king’s palace at Dijon
was burnt down ‘ by the firing of a culverin up the chimney to clean
it’ (Desrey.) In England a ‘chimney’ originally meant a movable

5o6 a master of WAR

fireplace— chimneys, in our sense of the word, being known as
early as the twelfth century, but not common till the reign of
Elizabeth, ‘Now have we manie chimnies/ writes Harrison, ^and
yet our tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then
had we none but reredosses, and our heads did never ake. For
as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient
hardning for the timber of the house ; so it was reputed a far
better medicine to keepe the goodman and his familie from the
quack or pose, wherewith as then verie few were oft acquainted.’

21 (p 1 1 5). ‘A Venise n’a point d’eaue doulce de la pluye; et
quant les cisternes seichent, il fault aller querir Teau au canal
de Padoue.’ (Voyage de la Saincte Cyti^ ‘ One thing only appears
to me hard in this city,’ writes Pietro Casola ; ‘ that is, that although
the people are placed in the water up to the mouth they often
suffer from thirst, and they have to beg good water for drinking
and for cooking, especially in the summer time. It is true that
there are many cisterns for collecting the rain water, and also
water is sold in large boatloads. In this way indeed they provide
for their needs, but with difficulty and expense.’ Sansovino ( Venefia
Descritta) also records that there were many of these wells
or cisterns (pozzt) both public and private. So the surprise of
Schaschek seems to imply that this was a real spring of fresh
water.

A MASTER OF WAR

22 (p. 127). Compare Luther’s sermon Das man Kinder sut
Schulen kalten solte (1530): ‘Many think that the writer’s task
is an easy one, but that to ride in armour and to suffer heat, frost,
dust, thirst, and other discomforts, that is the work of a man. . . .
I have heard the dear praiseworthy Emperor Maximilian say, “I
can make a knight, but a man of learning I cannot make.” . . .
There is no great art in hanging two legs over a horse and
becoming a Reuter ; that he taught me, and it is finely and well
spoken.’ Other countries seem, however, to have been in much
the same condition. Commynes, when describing the young nobles
of his acquaintance, declares that ‘de nulles lettres ils n’ont
connaissance. Un seul sage homme on ne leur met k I’entour.’
And Alain Chartier complains: ‘Ce fol langage court aujourd’hui
parmi les curiaulx (courtiers) que noble homme ne doit savoir
les lettres, et tiennent k reprouche de gentillesse bien lire ou
hien escrire. Las ! qui pourroit dire plus grant folie, ni plus
perilleux erreur publier ? ’ (D Esj^irancei) Deschamps writes a long
ballad on the subject, each verse ending with the plaint : ‘ Car
chevaliers ont honte d’estre clers.’ In England, even so early as m
1392, the writer of Piers Plowmatis Crede lamented : ‘Now may

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES

507

each cobbler send his son to school, and each beggar^s brat learn
on the book, and wax to a writer and dwell with a lord. So from
that beggar’s brat shall grow a bishop, to sit high among the
peers of the land ; and lords’ sons and knights, shall creep and
crouch to him, the while his sire is a cobbler clad in grease, “his
teeth with toylyng of lether tatered as a sawe.” ’ And both Richard
Pace and Roger Ascham echo his words. (Cf. Fumivall, E.E.T.S.,
vol. xxxii.)

23 (p. 129). Worthless rogues, wrote Trithemius, with neither
honour nor humanity, caring ever for plunder rather than for

victory. Surely for their sakes the whole country will, like Sodom
and Gomorrah, be destroyed, cried the chronicler of Spires. Sebastian
Franck couples their advent with that of the terrible disease which
was then decimating Germany : ‘ Thrusting, hewing, blaspheming,
gambling, murdering, burning, robbing, making widows and orphans,
is their common craft and highest amusement. If one cannot
seize and torture he is good for nothing.’ Compare also Erasmus ;
‘Bellum gentur per homicidas, per incestos, per aleatores, per
stupratores, per sordidissimos conductitios milites, quibus lucelium
carius est vita.’ (Epistles^ Amsterdam ed., vol. iii.) ‘C’^taient la
plupart gens de sac et de corde, m^chants gamements ^happ^s
de justice, marquds h I’epaule, essoriU^s, avec longs cheveux hdrissds
et barbes horribles.’ (Brant6me, Des Coronnels Franqais,) ‘Who
could oppose them?’ asked a witness of their appaUmg atrocities
at the Sack of Rome. ‘ None dared even lift his voice.’ {Sac de Rome^
by Jacques Buonaparte {d, I 54 i)> tr. by Napoleon Louis Buonaparte,

1830, ed. Buchon.) .

24 (P* 13O* Thomasin von Zerklare gives a lively account ot
medical* practice m his day: ‘The doctor who doctors well doct<^s
the sick man bravely with thirst, hunger, and burning. One he ties
up against the wall, cutting and stabbing him hard. From another,
if he wishes him not to sleep too much, he tears the beard and the
hair.’ Even in the sixteenth century gunshot wounds were held to
be poisoned, and were treated with boiling oil or treacle, and red-hot
irons, as may be seen in the wood-cuts in Hans von Gemdorf’s
Feldthuch der Wundarizney^ 1538. Compare also the account given
by Valleriolus of the English army at Montreuill (i 544 ); TbsrQ
was a great rabblement there, that tooke upon them to be ch^rgions.
Some were sow gelders, and some were horse gelder^ with tmkere
and coblers . . in two dressinges they did commonlie make their
cures whole and sounde for ever, so that they neidier felt heate nor
cold, nor no maner of pain after.’ {Office a/ a Cktrurgu^^. Ga^
AnSroise Par 4 himself, ‘the John Baptist of surgery, sW ^
prevalent passion for strange animal remedies, and retain^ for the
Later part of his life a warm affection for a balsam made^w-
Sm puLies seethed in oil of lUies, and earAworms «

turpentine. This, indeed, was a passion .that lasted well into the

508 A MASTER OF WAR

eighteenth century. Cf. for instance, the famous Pharmacoph of
L6mery, which recommended for fever an oil qf sixty fat spiders j
for sleeplessness an unguent of living frogs ; to make the hair
grow a salve of a dozen live green lizards ; for poison, ‘ three
hundred scorpions during the dog days ’ ; and for another disease to
‘ extract with scissors the tongues of four dozen still living vipers/ A
potion of baby magpies and powdered human skull was considered
excellent for epilepsy ; garden snails mixed with pig's blood un-
surpassed for lung-diseases \ while, should you wish your spirits to be
raised, ‘take two handfuls of the fattest ants and crush them in
mortar of marble/ In the matter of an organised medical service for
soldiers, the city of Nuremberg, when at war with Albert Achilles of
Brandenburg, seems (in Germany at least) to have led the way, for
the Chronik for the years 1449-50 records : ‘ Item, our masters of the
Council had commanded two doctors who should bind and heal the
people, were they noble or common, burgher or foot-soldier ; and our
masters had ordered the doctoring-fees, that none might give them
aught/ (Cf. Peters*) Charles the Bold, also, made an effort to improve
matters by attaching a surgeon to each company of eight hundred
men, and by allowing his own four skilled attendants to be freely
employed for the benefit of his troops. ‘And there are often so
many to be dressed,' writes Olivier de la Marche, ‘ that there would
be enough work for fifty surgeons. These four surgeons of the Duke
take nothing from the poor, nor from the foreign soldiers in the
Duke’s pay.'

25 (p. 137). A like incident had occurred the day before, at the
ceremony of welcome in St. Peter's. For when Frederick advanced
towards the Pontifical throne to offer greeting and homage to his
host, a difficulty at once arose, the Holy Father having ensconced
himself ‘ sundry steps or grades ' higher above Imperial Majesty tbqn
had been ordained by the bulls, or than could be tolerated by the
arrogant Germans. The ceremony was therefore at a standstill until
Papal Holiness bad stepped down from his undue eminence. Herr
Pastor, in his History of the Pofies^ does not mention either of these
incidents. ‘Throughout these solemnities,' he writes, ‘Frederick
behaved towards the Pope with the utmost respect and deference.’
These experiences of Wilwolt help to explain the remark of the
Ferrarese Chroniclers that the Emperor ‘went to Rome like a lamb
and came back like a lion.’ {Diario Ferrarese^

26 (p. 147). Eyb descnbes Charles’s artillery as great pieces,
quartans (cartaneti)^ culverms, demi-culverins, and sckerphertinern
{ycharfentinleif) a gun of light calibre, drawn by one horse. Cf.
Barthold.) Compare Thomas Coryat's observations at Zurich : ‘ In
the lowest roome ... I noted an exceeding multitude of pieces
of ordnance of all sorts, as culverins, demiculverins, demicannons,
sacers, basiliskes, etc., whereof some were taken as trophies from
the foresaid Duke of Burgundy, being indeed pieces of admirable

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 509

beauty and value, adorned with Ms armes, and many curious Ixnrders
and works contrived m the same. Amongst the rest I saw one
passing great murdering piece, both the ends thereof were so ex-
ceeding wide that a very corpulent man might easily enter the same.
This also was wonne in the field from the same Duke.» So tre-
mendous was the shooting at Neuss, and so great the damage, that
‘I verily believe,’ says Eyb, ‘that, where the walls had stood, an
unarmed man on a horse could have ridden into the town ; as 1 , the
writer of this history, could thereafter teU, by the extent of the 'new
walls, and moreover learned in later years from the old burgesses
who had been beleaguered therein.’ Some of Charles’s cannon-balls
have been built into the fourteenth century ‘Dnisus Thor,’ or
Cologne Gate.

27 (p* 154)- Large families were customary at this date in
Germany. Compare Jorg von Ehingen’s account of his f^rental
home : ^ Item, at that time there lived together at the castle of
Entringen five noblemen with their wedded wives. They lived
together peacefully and in friendship, and one hundred children
were born to them. Item, Herr Hans von Halfiingen, knight, and
Fraw N. von Nippenburg bore twenty children. Item, Ruodolfi
von Ehingen and Fraw Angngsz, Lady High Stewardess of Haimer-
tinger, bore nineteen children’ . . . And the remaining noble and
much-married pairs produced between them the magnificent number
of sixty-one children. Even this fine record was, however, beaten
by the Saxon Christoph Grohmann, who had thirteen sons by one
marriage and thirty-three children by another. (Cf. Bdsch.) The
generations seem also to have succeeded one another with aston-
ishing swiftness. The Zhmnerische Ckronik has an anecdote of
‘ an old lady ’ (and in those days eighty was considered the extreme
limit of age) who could truthfully say : ‘ Daughter, tell your daughter
that her daughter’s daughter’s daughter is crying.’

28 (p. 160), Pero Tafur gives an interesting account of the
arraigning of offenders in Germany : ‘ When all are assembled, the
oldest knights and sundry worthy matrons draw together, and search
out whether any of the nobles present has done aught that he should
not : robbed a maiden, offended a lady, seized the property of a
helpless orphan, taken to him for base pelf a plebeian wife, or other-
wise transgressed against his estate of knighthood.’ If an ofiender
is discovered, a number of knights are warned, and when he rides
into the lists they drive him out incontinently with sticks. The
matter is then explained to him, and if he consents to appear ncme
the less in the tournaments he is held to be purified of offence and
restored to honour. If he refuses, his punishment is doubled. And
if he refuses again, he is for ever deprived of his tourney rights.

29 (p. 167). A vigorous but vain attempt at reform was made
by the Franconian knights themselves at the great Wurzburg
Tournament of 14793 aud a regulation was drawn up forbidding all

510 A MASTER OF WAR

tilters to wear gold-worked stuffs and embroidered velvets, or to
cover their horses with housings and caparisons of gold, on pain of
public disgrace and forfeiture of the * fore dance and guerdon ’ of
the tourney. The ‘common nobles,’ who had no tilting privileges,
were not to be allowed any gold ornaments unless worn hidden, as
their forefathers used ; or any pearls, ‘ save one string only on hat
or cap ’ ; or any housings or coats of arms soever. As for the
ladies, they were to have only four dresses apiece, of which only
two were to be of velvet ; and even, concludes the order, ‘ should
one of the ladies be decked in anything less costly than velvet, she
shall yet be treated with honour according to her rank.’ (Cf. Schultz.)
An attempt was also made to exclude the rich burghers and all nobles
connected in any way with trade. The endeavour was not very
successful ‘ It suffices to be rich to attain,’ wrote Joh. Agricola.
‘ With our forefathers to ride in a tournament signified freedom from
open crime . . . above all usury and trade. Now all is altered:
honour no longer avails. . . . Once shopkeepers and merchants
were despised, now are they the highest at the board. . . . For
many princes and nobles are now not only dealers and tradesmen,
but also wine-sellers and beer-brewers, tearing the food from the
mouth of the poor,’ {Spruckworter^ Times had indeed changed
since the days when Ehingen could write of his father : ‘ When the
said Ruodolff returned to Swabia, he brought with him many costly
possessions of horses, raiment and jewels . . . with many precious
furs and foods. And seeing that at that time in Swabia it was
not the usage or custom to employ such costlinesses, he had them
sold and disposed of for 1,500 florins, and sent this sum thereupon
to the land and the people of the land.’

30 (p. 176). Hand-guns (handbuchsen) seem to have been the
common weapon in Duke Albrecht’s troops, but hackbuts {hakeur
biichsm^ are also occasionally mentioned by Eyb. Thus at the siege
of Leeuwarden (Keller’s ed., p. 173) the citizens had a troop of
mercenaries, who ‘shot with hackbuts, which they laid on trestles {pock).
The bullets for these pieces were cast in moulds, concerning which Eyb
tells a pleasant anecdote. For in the opening engagement of Schaum-
burg’s Hungarian campaign (Keller’s ed., p. 75) there came so great
a rain that the firearms were rendered useless, and the gunners,
stricken with fear, fled from the field, leaving behind them about
three hundred hackbuts and hand-guns. The enemy not only possessed
themselves of these, but, with an admirable impudence, wrote to
request Duke Albrecht to send them also the moulds for the pieces,
for otherwise they would not be able to use them. All the earlier
German firearms went by the name of buchse (cf. supra^ p. 84,
where Tetzel mentions them as in use at Santiago) which apparently
arose from their resemblance to a box. The long buchse^ from their
likeness to a pipe, were also called rohr^ the word commonly used by
Hans von Schweinichen. Another primitive ‘ murdering piece’ men-

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 511

tioned by Eyb is the balista {plaiden\ Elide, Kellefs ed^p, 36).
This is the latest instance of the use of the balista quoted by Schulte,
and illustrates curiously the survival of medieval engines of war, even
after the adoption of firearms. (‘ Balista : A brake or greate
engine, wherewith a stone or arrow is shotte. It may be used for a
gunne.’ Cooper’s Thesaurus,)

31 (p. 182). The struggle between the Hoeks and Kabeijaws
almost rivalled in its protracted and Protean bitterness that of
the Guelfs and Ghibellines. Originally, the Hooks were the country
nobles and the Codfish the townspeople ; but there grew to be a
Hook and a Cod party in every town. (Cf. Blok and Fisher.) ‘ It is
well known,’ wrote Eyb, ‘that almost all the Netherlands are plagued
by them, and that the said scisma or quarrel has lasted for over two
hundred years.’ ‘ The Duke of Saxony,’ says Grimeston, ‘ did suck
them in such sort, as Hollande did never suffer the like in the time of
any of their earles. Wherein hee tooke delight, to teach them not to
bee so cruell and bitter one against another, nor to entertaine facticms
and partialities amongst themselves, as they had donne manic yeares
under the titles of Hoecks and Cabillaux, the which it was impossible
to roote out, but by reducing both Factions to extremitie.’

32 (p, 185). The French auxiliaries prayed for quarter, writes

Molinet : ‘ Mais les Englez cognoissans leurs enseignes, comme leurs
ennemis anchiens, les misrent au trenchant des esp^s. Franchois
crioient : “ Ranchon I ranchon I nous sommes compaignons de guerre,
ne nous chaille de ces Flamengs 1 ” Et Englez, ignorans leurs
langaige, ou faindans que point ne les entendoient, les despesch^rent
si nettement qu’il n’en demoura que cinquante, lesquels k trfes grande
paine, se saulv^rent.’ ‘ Of the Englishe Partie, ther was slayn that
gentill yong Knight the Lorde Morley, and many Noblemen hurt. . . .
Also it is not to be forgoten, but to be had in Remembrance, the
goode Courage of an Englysche Yoman called John Person, whiche
was somtymes a Baker of Coventre. Whiche John Person, after
that a Gounne had borne away his Foote by the Small of the
Legge, yet, that notwithstanding, what setting and what knelmg,
shotte after many of his Arows, and when the Frenchemen fledde,
and his Felowers ware in the Chase, he cried to one of his Feiowes,
and saide, “ Have thow these vi. Arows that I have lefte, and folow
thow the Chase, for I may not” The whiche John Person died
within a few Dayes after, on whose SouUe Code have Mercy
(Leland’s Collectanea^ vol. iv.) *

33 (p. 188). The famous Goldsmith’s Row was erects! in 1491*

‘ In one single street, named the Strand, leading to St. Paul’s, there
are fifty-two goldsmiths’ shops, so rich and full of silver vessels, great
and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice and Florence
put together, I do not think there would be found so many of the
magnificence that are to be seen in London.’ (A Relation oj
England.) The skill of these artificers had been abundantly shown

512 A MASTER OF WAR

a few years before, when a Spaniard had wagered at the Pope’s
Head, Lombard Street, that Englishmen were not such cunning
workmen as his own countrymen. The foreigner, though learned
n all the most curious crafts and sleights of Cordova, had been
ingloriously routed from the field. (Cf. Richard Ford, in Quarterly
Review^ vol. 50.)

34 (p. 188). The cities of London and Westminster were still quite

distinct, as appears in the Venetian Report of 1512 ‘ The Parliament

has begun, that is to say all the gentlemen of the kingdom have
come, and are making a Parliament in the Palace of the King
called Vasmonestier, distant from London less than two miles ; and
all the gentlemen who come have houses in London, and it behoves
them to pass before the door of the house of their worshipful
Speaker (Orator)^ as well those who go by land as those who go
by water ; for there is a river called the Ta 7 nixa^ whereon they can
go in 100 boats, made after their fashion, from London to the
said Vasmonestier. And they are bound to pass before the said
worshipful house ; and having reached the said door, these gentle-
men, for the love that they bear to the magnificent and worshipful
Speaker, visit him with 16 and more or less servants ; some
come to dinner and some to breakfast {eolation)^ for this is the
custom of the country ; they have breakfast every morning. . . .
Every morning he goes to Mass with some of these gentlemen,
who hold him by the arms and walk up and down with him for
an hour ; then they go to the Council and he to his house.*
{Costumi di Loridra )

35 (p- 190)- This refers to the famous legend of the ‘Kentish
Longtails.* ‘Polydore Virgil,* writes Lambarde, ‘ (handeling that
hot contention, betweene King Henrie the second, and Thomas
Becket), saith that Becket (being at the length reputed for the king’s
enimie) began to be so commonly neglected, contemned, and
hated, that when as it happened him upon a time to come to
Stroude, the inhabitants thereabouts (being desirous to despite that
good father) sticked not to cut the taile from the horse on which
he roade, binding themselves , thereby with a perpetual reproach.
For afterwards (by the will of God) it so happened, that every one
which came of that kinred of men which had plaied that naughty
pranke, were borne with tailes, even as brute beasts bee.’ I dare
pronounce, he adds, that Kent is little beholden to those who
have brought to pass ‘ that as Kentish men be heere at home merily
mocked, so the whole English nation is in foreine countries abroad
earnestly flowted, with this dishonourable note, in so much that
many believe as verily that we be Monsters and have tailes by
nature, as other men have their due partes and members in
usuall manner. Behold heere one of the fruites of their spitefull
miracles.’ (Perambulation oj Kent!) The legend proved indeed
a source of much solace and diversion to England’s neighbours.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 513

Eustache Deschamps makes it the theme of several poems as in
the Rondel : *

Certres plus fors sont les Angles
Que les Franpoiz communement.

Car deux tonneaux portent adfes
Et une queue proprement.

In one Balade each verse ends with the refrain ‘ Levez vostre queue,
levez ’ ; and in another, that describes his adventure at Calais, with
‘Oil, je voy VO queue.’

. . ’ Lors vint II. Anglois,

Granson devant et moy apr6s
Qui mi prihdrent parmi la bride*

L’un me dist : * Dogue/ I’autre ‘ ride.’

Lors me devint la coulour bleue :

* Goday,’ fait I’un, I’autre : ‘ Commidre ’ (‘ Come hither ’).

Lors dis : ‘ Oil, je voy vo queue.’

Thus, declares Bale bitterly even in the reign of Edward VI.,
‘hath England in all other lands a perpetual infamie of tayles by
theyre written legendes of lyes. . . . That an Englyshman now cannot
travayle in another fend by way of marchandyse or any other h<mest
occupyinge, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his tethe that
all Englyshmen have tails.’ {Actes of English Votaries,) ‘ What
the original or occasion of it at first was is hard to say,’ writes John Ray,
‘whether from wearing a pouch or bag, to carry their baggage in
behind their backs, whilst probably the proud Monsieurs had their
Lacquies for that purpose ; or whether from the mentioned story
of Austin. I am sure there are some at this day in foreign parts,
who can hardly be perswaded but that Englishmen have tails.’
{Comfleat Coll, of English Proverbs^ 17^7.) The anecdote was also
attributed to St. Augustine in Dorsetshire, as, for instance, in The
Golden Legend^ which ends the narrative with the reassuring words :

‘ But blessyd be God at this day is no such deformyte,’ {Hist, of
St. Austin [AugustineJ.)

36 (p. 190). Charles d’Orldans {Dibat des Hiraulx) describes
Sluys as one of the finest harbours in Christendom, and it was here
that in 1386 the great fleet of 900 vessels assembled for the inva-iion
of England. (Cf. Froissart.) ‘ It holds 1,500 burghers,’ wrote Pero
Tafur, ‘and is strongly fortified with ditches and wails, . . . The
harbour of the town has a difficult entry because oi the outlying
sand-banks, but once the ships are inside they are marvellous safe.
With flowing tide they can drive right up to the walls ; so at the
ebb many are left high and dry, though on such deep sands that
they lie as well as on the water. The port looks as though half the
world had armed itself to blockade the town, so many ^ips of all
kinds lie there at anchor. And i^ in sooth, some be enemies, they
let it not be known, but go quietly about their business ; for else

A MASTER OF WAR

were they horribly punished. There can one see all the peoples of
the earth sitting by one another peacefully at table.’ But already,
like Sandwich, Sluys was the victim of a rapidly retreating sea,
a fate attributed by Maximilian’s friends to the transgressions of
Bruges : ‘ Whom God and nature thereafter sorely punished : since
the sea, which had washed the shores with its waters, withdrew and
left desolate that noble city of traffic.’ (Caspian. Cf. Kervyn de
Lettenhove.)

37 (196)* curious custom seems to have been a speciality

of the Netherlands, of Saxony and of Westphalia. Compare Von
Schweinichen’s account of his experiences at Dannenberg, inLunehurg.
He had arrived in the town with his master late on a winter’s night ;

^ In truth, we were all tired, and had rather have slept than danced ;
hut since the women folk were fair, we allowed ourselves for honour’s
sake to be made use of. At last the lords were full and disappeared,
including my company. But since I had the fame of being always
the last on the battlefield of drink, I would not have my name taken
from me, and stayed up. The lads of the place now disappeared
also, as well as the lasses, so that at last there remained with me
no more than two maids and one squire ; who started to dance, I
following his example. Soon my good friend with the one maid
slipped into the chamber close to the dancing-room : I, there-
fore, after him. When we came into the room there were two lads
with lasses in bed ; and he who had been dancing along with me
fell with his maid also into a bed. I inquired of the lady with
whom I was dancing what we should do. “After the fashion of
Mecklenburg,” said she, “I should also climb into your bed.” Whereto
I stayed not long to be prayed, but laid' myself down with cloak and
clothing, and the maid also ; and thus we discoursed till it was fully
day, yet in all honesty And on the morrow I had done the best,
for I had been the longest up and about, and I had the best come
through. So I was looked upon with great favour by the womenkind.
And this they call sleeping together in faith and fealty ; but I choose
such sleeping for myself no more, since this sort of faith and fealty
might lead to being a rogue.’ (See also the Zhnmerzsche Chronik^
bd. iv., 243.)

3B (p. 197). Compare the accounts sent by the Regent Margaret
to Maximilian of a later Enghsh expedition under the command
of Sir Edward Poynings : ‘ Et vous asseure, Monseigneur, que les
Anglois se acquictent tr 4 s bien et font plus de guerre aux ennemys que
tous les aultres.’ And again she declares that the English artillerymen
‘ s’acquittent merveilleusement bien et trop mieulx que nulz aultres
qui soient ^ ladite armde, dont ilz sont k louer.’ (Letters concerning
the siege of Venlo, September 1511, in Correspondance de Marguerite
dAutriche. Van den Bergh.) ‘You are tall souldiers (said the
Spaniards to the English at the siege of Amiens), and therefore
when you come downe to the trenches, wee double our guards, and

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 515

looke for blowes.’ (Heylyn.) Compare also the description by the
chronicler Antonio Agapida of the English volunteers who were fight-
ing the Moors of Granada in this very year of 1402 : A comely race
of men, too fair and fresh for war ; huge feeders and deep carousers ;
noisy and unruly, making their quarter of the camp a scene of loud
revel and sudden brawl ; of a pride silent and contumelious, holding
themselves, though from a remote and barbarous island, the most
perfect men upon earth. Add to this, marvellous good men in the
ffeld, dexterous archers, and powerful with the battle-axe, ever seek-
ing, in their great pride and self-will, to press in the advance, and
take the post of danger; going into the fight deliberately, and
persisting obstinately, slow to find out when they were beaten.
* Withal they were much esteemed, yet little liked by our soldiery,
who considered them staunch companions in the field, yet coveted
but little fellowship with them in the camp.' As for the bearing
and array of their leaders, it was ‘ something very magnificent,
delectable and strange to behold.' (Cf. Washington Irving, Ccmqmst
of Granada^

39 (p. 227), It is the suggestion of Professor Uhnann('J/^««//zVi» /.,
bd. i.X who uses this description as an illustration of the tactics of
the day, that the word here should be— not mirickt but swerzeks :
athwart ; for by such a manoeuvre the pikes could be struck upwards
and rendered useless. This became a favourite device in the Italian
wars of the succeeding thirty years. It would appear, indeed, that in
this as in other engagements, Schaumburg's tactics were considerably
in advance of his age. Machiavelli's main criticism of the German
and Swiss pikemen and their methods of fighting is that, thoi^h
excellent against the rushing charge of cavalry, they were powerless
when at close quarters with other footmen. ‘The Dutchman,* he
declares, ^can not strike the enemie with the Pike, who is upon
him, for the length of the staffe.' And Wilwolfs disposition of his
men in this battle is in exact accordance with the principles laid
down in the Arf of War, ‘ 1 would place the Pikes,' writes Machiavelli
in the second book, ‘either in the front of the battaile, or wl^re
I should feare most the horses, and those with the Targuets and
swords, shall serve mee to make a back to the Pikes, and to wmi«
the battaile.' To pass the first points of the pikes is not very difficult,
he adds. The trouble comes when ‘incountering the one thother,
of necessitie they thrust together, after such sort, that they take
the one thother by the bosome, and though by the Pikes son^ bee
slaine or overthrowen, those that remaine <m their feete be so
many, that they suffice to obtain the victory/

40 (p. 238). The word kemenate seems to have signified both
the stove or chimney and the chamber (usually the common dweliing-
room) in which these were placed. The stove soon became the
favourite method of heating in Germany, and aroused strong feelings
of pleasure or the reverse in all travellers. Erasmus is eloquent on

Si6 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

its peculiarities ; ‘ When you have drest your horse, you come
whole into the stove, boots, luggage, dirt and all ; for that’s a common
room for all comers.’ Here * you put off your boots, don your shoes,
change your shirt, if you will ; hang up your cloaths, or set your
self a drying. If you have a mind to wash, the water’s ready, hut
then you must have more water to fetch off the dirt of that.’ Often
‘you shall have betwixt fourscore and an hundred persons . . .
in the same stove : horse and foot, merchants, mariners, wagoners,
husbandmen, women and children, sick and sound. One’s combing
of his head, another wiping off his sweat, a third cleansing of his
boots, or hob-nailed shoes ; others belching of garlick ; without more
adoe, the confusion of Babel, for men and languages, was nothing
to this. The more company, the more fire he puts in the stove,
though they were half smothered before : for ’tis a token of respect to
stew the people into a sweat. If any man that’s ready to choak with
the fume, does but open the window never so little, mine host
bids him shut it again. If he says he’s not able to bear it, get
ye to another Inn then (cries the Master).? (Colloquy of The Inns^)
Ariosto disliked the stove exceedingly, both for its heat and for
its regrettable adaptability :

. . Vi si mangia, giuoca e bee,

E vi SI dorme, e vi si fa anche il resto.

Guarini also complained bitterly of the heat and stench of the ‘ stoves
or rather stables,’ whence ‘the dog and the cat and the hen and
the goose and the pig and the calf, and even the child,’ made his
nights hideous. (Letter quoted by D’Ancona.) Montaigne, on the
other hand, delighted in them.

THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

41 (p. 250), ‘ The rod of discipline drives folly without pain from
the heart of the child,’ writes Sebastian Brandt ; ‘ without castigation
is learning seldom acquired.’ {Narrenschiff.) The punishments were
at times very rigorous. Thomas Platter records that his first master
‘beat me right evilly, took me often by the ears and lifted me
from the ground, so that I squawked like a goose that feels the knife,
and the neighbours screamed to ask whether he was seeking to
murder me.’ Johann Butzbach was tied to a pillar by his parents
and soundly thrashed, while his comrades sang a hymn Melanchthon
received a stroke for every fault in his Latin, his teacher thus making,
he declares, ‘ a grammaticus of me ’ ; and Luther, who declared the
schools to be ‘prisons and hells,’ was swished fifteen times in one
morning. (Cf. Bosch.) Guarinonius describes how he was constantly
chastised by a ‘ school- tyrant’ with a scourge that had three thick
cutting leather thongs ; and how he had ‘ deep holes ’ and wounds

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 517

in his fleshy the marks of which remained through life. Compare also
the Praise of Folly, where Erasmus condemns schoolmasters as
of all men the most miserable, growing old in penury and filth,
but perfectly satisfied so long as they could yell at their terrified
boys, box, beat and flog them, thus indulging their cruel disposition.
Matters were not much better in England. In the Paston Letters
for I45S> Agnes Paston hopes that her son’s master ‘ wyll trewly
belassch hym, tyl he wyll amend : and so ded the last maystr, and the
best that ever he had, att Cambrege.’ ‘ Learning is robbed of her
best wits by the great beating,’ said Roger Ascham, the origin of
whose Schole 7 naster was Sir William Cecil’s remark • ‘ I have strange
news brought me this morning, that divers scholars of Eton be run
away from the school for fear of beating.’ Tusseris poem, written
about i534» the same story:

From Paul’s I went to Eton sent
To learn straightways the Latin phrase
When fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had :

For feult but small or none at all
It came to pass thus beat I was
See, Udall, see the mercy of thee
To me poor lad.

(Cf. Fumivall, E.E.T,S., vot xxxii.)

42 (p. 252). “ Le Roy menoit Farchiduc h la chasse des grosses
bestes, h la voUerye et au jeu de la paume, ou souvantes fbys
jouerent tous deux ensemble.’ (Jean d’Auton.) Fleurange speaks
of ‘une fa^on de faire merveilleusement belle la vdnerie et la faul-
connerie ’ at the Court of Louis XI L, and of how, when the rime
came, ‘pour courir les cerfs i force,’ the ‘veneurs’ assembled ‘tons
habill^s de vert avec leurs trompes.’ But he also tells of the King’s
‘vdnerie des toiles,’ and of how himself and the future Francis L
‘laschoient des pants de ret, et toute mani^re de hamois, pour
prendre les cerfs et les b^tes sauvages.’ Louis was so devoted to
the chase that he hunted summer and winter alike. Cmnpare also
the unfinished De la Vet^erie of Charles IX. The Ge rm a n ^hion,
‘ chasses k la manikre d’Allemagne,’ was introduced by Charles V. mto
Spain, and appears in the pictures of Velasquez. (CL the Marquis de
Villars, Mifnoires de la Cour d^Esfagne, 1678.) It is graphically
described by M orison : ‘ The Princes Hunte Redd Deare and Harts
seldome, and only at sett tymes of the yeare, and then they rather
murther than hunte them. For the Clownes drive whole heardes of
them into the Toyles, Compassing a great Circuite of grouode,
wherein they shoote at them with gonnes and Crosbowes, and wtei
they are faUen, kill them with shorte swordes, by hundreths at a tyme.’

(Shakespeards Buropel) t. 1^

43 (P- ^^55)* There were several bail games popular at the French

5i8 the adventures OF A PALSGRAVE

Court at this date, but this appears to have been tennis. Three years
earlier Charles VIII. had died from hitting his head against a door on
his way ‘ to see the tennice plaiers in the trenches of the Castle ’ of
Amboise, and three years later Philip himself was to die of a glass of
water after a game of tennis. Fleurange, indeed, tells of other games
of ball which he was playing at this very moment with the young
Fiancis of Angoulesme, such as ‘I’escaigne, qui est un jeu venu
d’ltalie, de quoi on n\ise point pays de par deck, et se joue avec
une balle pleine de vent, qui est assez grosse ; et Pescaigne qu’on
tient dans la main est faict le devant en mani^re d’une petite escabelle,
dont les deux pieds sont pleins de plomb, afin qu'elle soit plus pesante
et qu’elle donne plus grand coup.’ They also played ^ k la grosse boule,
qui est un jeu d’ltalie, non accoustum^ par dega, qui est aussi grosse
comme un tonneau, pleine de vent ; et se joue avec un brasselet
d’estain bien feultreux avec des corroyes de cuir, et s’etend depuis le
coude jusques au bout du poing, avec une poign<5e d’estain qui se tient
dedans la main. Et est un jeu fort plaisant k ceux qui s’en sgavent
aider.’ But these were Italian games, not much practised in France.
It was about this time that tennis-players began to use rackets instead
of the naked palm of the hand.

44 (P* 254). Laurent Vital puts the matter in a different light.
There is a great diversity, he writes, in the treatment both of men and
of beasts, between Germany and Castile. ‘ In Germany it is paradise,
as well for the serving men as for the horses who serve their masters.
You shall find through all the Germanies the men as well stuffed and
furnished as their lords, and the horses nowhere so well groomed,
curried, covered and appointed as there.’ In Castile, on the other
hand, the wretched servitors ‘ are constrained at all times to play the
lackey and run on foot after their masters . . . and they are fortunate
if they find a bench or table to rest and sleep upon.’ As^ for the
poor horses and mules, *when at the lodging they should find good
ptovender and good litter, they are hunted out to feed upon misery ;
whence they are thin, weak and famishing : yet on the morrow must
they set again to work.’

45 (p* 255). In other respects, Valladolid seems to have been
strangely uncivilised, even for so wild a country as Spain of the fifteenth
century. See Laurent Vital for a description of the city worthy of
Rabelais. To perambulate its streets and thoroughfares was to traverse
a constant cataract of filth, not even the highest ecclesiastic being able
to gain redress or apology for that which was dashed upon him from
the windows with never so much as a * Guarda ! ’ ; the neighbourhood
was littered with ‘ little children, new-born, piteous and abandbned ’ ;
while the whole city was swarming with thieves and criminals, whose
common punishment was but to be ‘ cudgelled about the town on
donkeys.’ ' Vi si vive con qualche poco meno di severity che non si
fa nel resto di Castiglia,’ writes Navagero discreetly. It must be
admitted* however, that Camillo Borghese, Martin ZeiUer, and others

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 519

give a not much less revolting account of the streets of Madrid many
years later than this.

46 (p. 255). The flagellants of Madrid are the theme of many
travellers. Their aim seems to have been both gallantry and
penitence. ‘ The first time I met one of them, I thought I should
have swooned away,' says Mme. d'Aulnoy. ‘ Fancy a man coming
so near you, that he will cover you all over with his blood ; this, it
seems, is one of their pastimes. They give themselves most
terrible cuts and slashes upon their shoulders, whence run
streams of blood. They walk so softly in the streets as if they
counted their steps ; they present themselves before their mistresses’
window, and there with wonderful patience lash themselves. The
lady, through the lattice of her chamber, sees this fine sight, and
by some sign encourages her gallant to flay himself alive, and lets
him know how very kindly she takes this action of his. vhiQn they
meet a handsome woman they whip themselves after such a rate, as
to make the blood fly about her : this is esteemed a particular civility,
and the lady acknowledges and thanks them for it - . . After these
servants of God are returned home there is a magnificent supper of
all sorts of meat ; and observe, that this is on the last day ot Passicm
week. But after so good a work, they think they may do a little
evil.’ The penitent ^ sets himself at the table with his friends, and
receives from them the eulogies and applause which he believes
he has merited. Every one in his turn tells him that in the memory
of man none was ever seen to receive the discipline with so good
a grace. . . . Sometimes he that has been so well flogged, is so sick,
that he cannot go to Mass on Easterday.’

But there were also true penitents; ‘which indeed troubles one
extremely to look on them ,* they are dressed just as those who
give themselves the discipline, except that they are naked from
the shoulders to the middle, and with a kind of a narrow matt, are
swaddled and bound so hard that all the flesh which appears is
black and blue ; their arms, stretched out, are wrapped about with the
same matt. They carry to the number of seven swords stiddng in
their backs and arms, which hurt them grievotsly when they stir
too much, or happen to fall,- which they often do ; for they going
bare-footed, and the stones in the streets being sharp^ and cutting
their feet, they cannot possibly always keep themselv^ up.
There are others, who instead of these swords carry crosses so very
heavy that they are even borne down with them j neither wouM
I have you think that these are the ordinary people ; some td than
are of the highest quality. They are forced to have sevaral ^ their
servants to accompany them, but they are disguised, and theft faces
covered, lest they should be known. Th^e carry wine, vinegar,
and other things, to give their masters from tune to time, w^ vary
frequently drop down dead with the extream pain and toil they
endure. Generally these penances are enjoined by their confes^rs,

520 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

and they are so very severe that he who undergoes them seldom
outlives the year.’ ‘Le jeudi saint,’ writes Bassompierre, ‘on fit,
Tapr^s- diner, la grande procession des penitents, ou il y eut plus de
deux mille hommes qui se fouett^rent’ Compare also the Baitus of
Henri IIL

47 (p. 271). According to Herr Peltzer’s theory, Albrecht
Durer’s (?) picture (facing p. 241) shows us the Castle of Heidelberg
at this very moment, drawn, if not with absolute faithfulness, at least
with as near an accuracy as was ever usual in those days. The
chief magnificences lof the Castle were to be added by the sons and
grandsons of Philip the Upright, including Frederick himself, who
built the great Glockenthurm, or Bell Tower, after designs made
many years earlier by Albrecht Durer. For a description of it at
this later stage see the Viaje of Calvete, who visited it in 1 549, when
Frederick, as Elector, was residing there with his wife. An interesting
reference to the treasures of Heidelberg occurs in the biography
of Wilwolt von Schaumburg. For in his later life this hero took
a brief part in the Bavarian War of Succession, fighting on the side
of the Palatine princes ; and had not these behaved ‘ altogether
foolishly ’ (says Eyb), ousting him through jealousy from his command,
matters' might have gone very differently. Considering his former
exploits on an empty purse, what might he not have done when backed
by a tower containing ‘ over twelve times a hundred thousand florins,
several tons of beautiful pearls, gold plate and marvellous jewels to
the value of three hundred thousand florins \ ’ not to speak of vast
stores of ammunition.

48 (p. 273). Young as he was, writes Hubertus proudly, the Pals-
grave knew so well how to remind the Emperor both of the constant
devotion of the Palatine House and of the constant intrigues of the
Bavarian, that after many days, which the Emperor took for reflection,
he attained his end. It must be admitted that, despite the complacency
of old Thomas, this end signified no great glory for the Palatinate ;
for most of the disputed dominions remained in the hands of the
Dukes of Bavaria, while the remainder were appropriated by Maxi-
milian himself. A small portion, including the towns of Sukbach
and Neuburg — the so-called Junge Pfalz — ^was, however, carved off
on behalf df the Palatine claimants, while Frederick himself, as their
guardian and representative, was awarded the rank of mediatised
Prince of the Empire.

49 (p* 274). This friendship had a curious result, for when the
Papal commissaries saw that the Palsgrave Frederick stood so high in
the confidence of the Emperor, they reflected, says Hubertus, how
they might turn it to account, and quickly offered him ‘a good
part of Italy to govern, if he would but remain with them.’ When
the Count Palatine reported this to Maximilian, with a request for
ad^*ce ; * I perceive,’ replied the Emperor, ‘ that as yet you know
neither the wits of these Italians, nor their cunning, nOr the goal

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 521

whereat they aim. • . . They only now promise you great riches,
in order to have in their power one whom (when it suits them or
he might prove of service to me) they can instantly banish or undo
with poison ; against which we Germans know not in the least
how to protect ourselves, being so easily taken in by flattering words,
and so little given to deceit, that they reckon and despise us as
beasts. Again and again therefore I exhort and pray you to give
them no trust or belief.' Maximilian's letters to his daughter
Margaret show his constant fear of Italian poisoners.

50 (p. 279). The moment had not yet come when Charles V., by
shaving his aching head, caused a revolution in the fashion of hair-
dressing, and Frederick still wore his hair as flowing as that of
the St. George of Carpaccio. German men were, indeed, almost as
careful of their locks as the Bohemians. Hans Folz (1480) in his
poem ‘ Von eimm Buler'* teUs of the lover's ‘martyrdom' over his
hair : ‘In winter it must be crisply curled once or twice a day ;
sometimes it must be stuck into sulphur; what was before frozen
with cold must now be held right m hot smoke. Now it must be
plucked with the hand ; now it must be bound up with a rag and
whirled into a knot. Sometimes they beat eggs and wax into it
till it is like a cake. And when at last they come to dress it out,
behold it neither yellow nor crispied, and they peer out from there-
under as from a door with a portcuHis.’ (Cf. Keller, Fastfmoktspiih^
The third sign of a fool, according to the preacher Geiler von
Kaisersberg, was ‘to adorn the hair, making it yellow, curling and
long.' Even the women now imitated the men and let their hair
hang to their hips under bonnets and caps, embraved with cocks*
feathers and stitchery, or puffed out into haloes round their h^ds
‘like the saints in the churches.' ‘Fie on the shame and nn-
modesty ! O people, why thus display your long hair, foil of Kce
and vermin ?' (Brdsamlin^ I 5 i 7 -) Mumer, in the Narmiiesckmorung^
gives an even more explicit description of the drawbacks of an
abundant and ornate head of hair.

51 (p. 280). Antonio de Beads, who was at Brussels in 1517,
describes the grounds of the Palace in which tl^se lovers may
have wandered. Chief among the spots likely to have afforded them
solitude was ‘ a vast labyrinth, with many chambers and passages
more than two paces broad twelve spans high, thick-roofed and
interwoven with the boughs of certain shrubs that grow in the woods,
having leaves like to those of the hazel, but smoother and more lining ;
the which is in truth a most beautifol thing to see.' Th^
garden was called Im- Folia^ writes Calvete, and composed of trees
ordered and interlaced ‘with such great ingenuity, mtifice, labour and
elegance, that it was incredible the freshness of it ; with so many
doorways, alleys, inlets and outlets, arbours and retreats, ponds, lake-
lets and fountains, that it was another labyrinth of Crete.' In this
garden was a private tiltyard where the nobles practised for the jousts,

522 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

and gave banquets to their ladies. On another side of the Palace was
the ‘ great and deep ’ swan-pond seen m its winter array by Rozmital,
with a columned summer-house {cenadero) rising in the midst ; and on
a third side was a vine-clad slope that ‘ made most fresh and reposeful
the view from the windows of the Palace.' Beyond these gardens
lay the park, where the hunting-parties took place: ‘a great level
forest, very green with oaks and beeches and other big trees, in
which are many fallow deer, roe deer, hares and rabbits, which may
be seen from the palace feeding.' ‘ This park,' writes John Evelyn,
‘ for being entirely within the walls of the city is particularly remark-
able ; nor is it less pleasant than if in the most solitary recesses ; so
naturally is it furnished with whatever may render it agreeably,
melancholy and country-like.'

52 (p. 285). This seems to have been unusual among German
princesses at this time. Cf., for instance, Wotton’s letters to Henry
VILI. concerning Anne of Cleves : ‘She canne not synge, nor pleye
upon onye instrument ; for they take it he ere yn Germany e for a
rebuke, and an occasion of lightenesse that great Ladyes shuld be
lemyd or have enye knowledge of musike.' {Original Letters^ ed.
Ellis, vol. ii.) The organist of the archducal chapel, Henri Bredeniers,
received in 1 51 1 the gift of a hundred pounds ‘ pour le recompenser du
soin, peine et travail qu’il a pris et prend encore chacun jour a instruire
et apprendre mon dit seigneur Parchiduc, et mes dites dames ses
soeurs au jeu du clavicorde et autres instrupients.' {Comptes de Lille^
quoted by Moeller.) ‘ In this country three things are of supreme
excellence,' wrote Vincenzo Quirini in 1505, and of these one was
music, ‘of which it may undoubtedly be said that it is perfect.'
(Alberi, Ser. 1 . 1. i.)

5 3 (p- 237)* Vital describes the two kinds of jousts at this time
popular, in his account of the reception of Charles V. at Valladolid.
The first was the ‘joute r^alle,' a comparatively gentle sport, accom-
plished with enormous targes and blurred spears. But the second
was a serious business, ‘ L'autre joilte dtoit h heaume et harnois de
guerre, les lances de fer esmoulu, qui estoit une fort pdrilleuse joilte
comme bien yparut. , . . Entre lesquels joilteurs en y ett un'qui e^t
I'epaule percee de part en part, teUement que le trongon de la lance,
de deux pieds et demi de long, lui demeura dedans I'dpaule, et en
partoit sang en grande abondance. Et y eht 1 ^ des aussi rudes coups
de lances donnds que on sauroit, et tout plein de lances rompus,
plusieurs gentilshommes endormis, et tout plein de port^s par terre.’
Maqudriau also gives a vivid account of this particular joust, which so
horrified Charles that he forbade the practice : ‘ Ndanmoins ceux qui
demeur^rent k cheval, recommenc^rent de telle sorte qu'on ne les
pouvait s^parer. Les plumards saillaient en Pair. Les hamais
tombaient enmy le march^. Le sang des hommes et des chevaux
desravaient de tons c 6 tds. Les gens qui les regardaient, criaient :
^Jisus I Jisus Le Roy, ^ant aux fen^tres, ddfendait de ffapper.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 523

Les d6moiselIes criaient et pleuraient de compassion qui s’y fcsait.
Quelque cri qu’il y eilt, les capitaines rendaient courage k leurs
gens et recommengaient de plus beau. A la fin, le Roy enroya
tant de gens qu^on rompit la mel^e. ... II fit le serment que
jamais de son vivant, il ne souffrirait encore pareil toumoi,* The
enthusiasm of the Palsgrave for this dangerous amusement seems,
however, to have lasted into his old age, for when, in 1549, he was
visited at Heidelberg by Philip of Spain, one of the chief divereions
provided was ‘ une justa de plangones y silla rasa aP antigua.’ * It
wonderful,’ adds Calvete, ‘ to see the encounters and the falls which
these German Caballeros gave one another.’

54 (p* 295). Professor Moeller reproduces (in modernised form)
four letters written at this time by Palsgrave Frederick. Of these,
three are to Charles, in which the culprit deprecates the royal
‘ malivolance,’ and declares his submission to the royal will, his
innocence at all times of any intention to thwart it, his readiness
to justify himself either ‘ de mon corps ’ or by oath, and his passionate
desire not to be banished without either a hearing or the ‘ benefice *
of his ‘ bons et longs services.’ The fourth letter is to the Princess of
Orange, imploring her intercession and disclaiming any fault save
‘ jeunesse et folie d’amour.’ Professor Moeller also gives a modern-
ised version of the ^rods-verbal^^n interesting document, which hilly
confirms the narrative of Huberras. A facsimile of Frederick’s hand-
writing is published in Lanz, Correspondenz K, Karls K, roL ii.

55 (P* 302). In the will of the Elector Palatine Philip the cus-
tomary order of descent was interrupted, and the name of Frederick
placed directly after that of Ludwig, the immediate heir-— an
arrangement that later procured for the Palsgrave the dignity d[
the Electorate. The old Prince had also ordained that Frederick
should meanwhile share with his eldest brother the principality of
the Upper Palatinate, or Nordgau, which usually/onned the appanage
of the heir-apparent, and possessed an administration, independent of
Heidelberg, with its own chancery and its own ccmrt of justice. The
inheritance, however, was crippled with del^ and the <^vision of
authority had not proved wholly satisfactory, so Frederick had
left his share of the succession in his brother’s hands* It was now
agreed, not without much discussion, that the Elector ^ould rule
on the Rhine, while the Palsgrave administered the Oberpfelz, m
Nordgau. The nephews were the" sons of his elder brc^her Rupert,
and claimants through their mother of the disputed Bavarian
Succession. Two of them were those Counts Palatine Otto Hen^
and Philip, whose portraits, according to Mr. Dicfces, appear in
Holbein’s picture of the (so-called) "Ambassadors’ in the National
Gallery. (Cf, Holbein^s Celebrated Picture, 1903*)

56 (p. 303). These words were echoed by Chi^vres when
Frederick bore the news of Charles’s election to Spain. The Count
Palatine had brought them an honour which cost much gold.

S 24 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSORAVE

and could well have been dispensed with, he peevishly declared:
‘Your German Empire is no more than the name of a vanished
glory, and what does any one gain therefrom, save countless ex-
penses and infinite pains ? ’ ‘If you hold the Holy Roman Empire
for so little worth,' retorted Frederick, ‘why have you so constantly
exhorted us to spare no money to satisfy your longings? Since
you regret what you have spent, give us back this name of a
vanished glory, and I vow that your money shall be repaid to you,
aye, with interest ' : at which dignified reply, Chi^vres was stricken
dumb. Compare also Granvelle's words at the Diet of Spires : ‘ The
Emperor has for the support of his dignity not a hazel-nut's worth
of profit from the Empire.' (Bryce's Holy Roman Emj>ire.)

57 (P* say truth,' writes Fynes Morison, ‘ the Germans

are in high excesse subject to this vice of drinking. ... I know
not how the fellowship of drunkards is so pleasing to them, as a man
shall with no other quality make so many friends as with this, so as
he that wil be welcome in their company, or desires to leame their
language, must needs practice this excesse in some measure. When
they drinke, if any man chance to come in and sit in the roome,
though he be a stranger of another Nation, they doe not onely conjure
him to pledge them by the bond of friendship, of his Father’s Nobility,
and his Mother's chastity, but (if ne^ be) compell him by force there-
unto.' ‘ Yet,' he adds, ‘ in their drinmng they use no mirth, and little
discourse, but sadly ply the business, sometimes crying one to the
other, Seyie frolich (Be merry), Drinke aus (Drinke out), and as (accord-
ing to the Proverbe) every Psalme ends in Gloria^ so every speech of
theirs ends in Ich brings euch (I drinke to you). For frolicks they
pinch, and that very rudely, their next Neighbours arme or thigh,
which goes round about the Table.’ ‘ They shake the wine over the
children in the cradle,' said Sebastian Franck, ‘for fear they should
not learn it of themselves. . . ^ The nobility can now scarce keep
the roofs on the castles that their fathers built from the ground.
And why? Because when they are together they behave as though
they were bound in one day to ruin all in drink and play.' (Von dem
GrewlicTien Laster der Trunkenheit^ 1531.) ‘ Young children practise
this vice,’ echoed Matthaus Friedrich: ‘they can all already drink half
bumpers to one another. The parents teach it to their children.
“ Let us see what you can do,” says the father to the small son; “bring
him a half or a whole 1 '” ( Wider den Saufteuffel.) ‘ I saw the
Germanes drink helter-skelter very sociably,' writes Coryat. ‘ It is
their custome, whensover they drink to another, to see their glasse
filled up incontinent (for therein they most commonly drinke), and
then they deliver it into the hand of him to whome they drinke,
esteeming hiip a very curteous man that doth pledge the whole. . . .
But, on the contrary side, they deeme that man for a very rustical and
unsociable peasant, utterly unworthy of their company, that will not
With reciprocal turaes mutually retaliate a health. And they verifie

S25

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES

the olde speech, § niSi ^ that is, eyther drinke or be gonj

‘ Leur vin se sert dans des vaisseaus come grandes cruches,’ said
Montaigne, ‘et est un crime de voir un gobelet vuide qu’ils ne
remplissent soudain, & jamais de Feau, non pas a ceus mesme qoi en
demandent, s’ils ne sont bien respect^s. . . . IIs sont glorieiix,
chol^res et yvrognes.’ {Journal^

58 (P-' 313)- ‘Gulae tumor, struma sive scrophum.* ‘Struma;
a swelling within the throte : the King’s Evil!.’ (Cooper’s Thesaurus.)
This was the famous King’s Evil, which brought people even from
afar to be healed by the royal touch. ‘From Spaine also there
come to France many poore Spaniards to bee cured of the King’s
Evill,’ writes Howell. {Forreine Travell.) The origin of this
privilege of the French crown has been a source of disagreement
among chroniclers, but it was commonly attributed (as this account
of Hubertus Thomas shows) to the miraculous chrysom of St.
Remigius, (See The Golden Legend^ The touch was accompanied
by the words ‘ Le roi te touche, Dieu te gu6rit.’ Ambroise Par6, a
contemporary of Hubertus, had no great faith in the cure. ‘At
Bayonne,’ he tells, ‘ I dressed a Spanish gentleman, who had a gieat
and enormous swelling of the throat. He had lately been touched
by the deceased King Charles (IX.) for the King’s Evil’ Tlw
practice lasted till the Revolution, and Louis XVI. touched no less
than 2,400 sufferers in one day, of whom only five were cured.

When Hubertus advises the English kings to strengthen their
claim to the French throne by this device he goes astray, for they
had already, from Edward the Confessor downwards, ‘touched’ for
the King’s Evil. ‘The kynges of England,’ writes Boorde, ‘by
the power that God hath given to them, dothe make sicke inen
whole of a sycknes called kinge’s evyll. ... For this matter let
every man make frendes to the Kinges majestie, for it doth pertayne
to a Kynge to helpe this infirmitie by the grace the which is gev^
to a Kynge anoynted.’ Henry VIII. made a gratuity of 7^. 6^3^ to ah
persons whom he touched — a circumstance not unlikely to promt^e
the disease. Dr. Johnson was touched as a child for scrofula by
Queen Anne, of whom * he had,’ he said, ‘ a confused but somehow
a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a k)i]g
black hood.’ And Barrington teUs of meeting another this Queen’s
child-patients, who, when asked whether he had really been cured,
answered, with a significant smile, ‘that he beEeved himself never
to have had a complaint that deserved to be considered as the
Evil, but that his Parents were poor, and had no objection to the
bit of Gold.’ (Cf. Brand’s Antiquities.)

59 fP* 338)- The Sudor Anglicus, or English sweat, had a mys-
terious career. It first appeared after the battle of Bosworth Fieki,
and was, says Hall, ‘ so sure, so peynfull and sharp, that the lyke was
never harde of, to any mannes remembrance before that tyme.
For sodenly a dedly and burnyng sweate invaded their bodyes and

526 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

vexed their bloud with a most ardent heat, infested the stomach
and the head grevously : by the tormentyng and vexacion of which
sicknes, men were so sore handled and so painfully pangued. . . .
All in maner assone as the sweate toke them, or within a short
space after, yielded up their ghost. So that of all them that sickened,
ther was not one emongest an hundreth that escaped.’ It came
again in 1506, 1517, 1528 ('The Great Mortality’) and 1551, since
when it has never been heard of. Its ‘soubdeine sharpeness and
unwont cruelnes passed the Pestilence,’ wrote Dr. Kaye. For while
the Plague comnionly gave a few days’ respite to its victims, the
Sweating Sickness ' immediatly killed ’ : ' Some in opening theire
windowes, some in plaieng with children in their strete dores, some
in one hour, many in two, it destroyed, and at the longest to them
that merilye dined it gave a sorowful Supper. As it founde them,
so it toke them, some in sleape some in wake, some in mirthe'
some in care, some fasting and some ful, some busy and some
idle, and in one house sometyme three, sometyme five, sometyme
seVen, sometyme eight, sometyme more, sometyme all,’ {T/ie Sweate^
by Dr. Kaye, founder of Cams College, ed. Babington, 1889.) If
a man took cold, declared Hayward, ‘ he died within three hours ;
if he slept within six hours, as he should be desirous to do, he
died raving.’ A physician is useless, wrote Du Bellay, ‘for whether
you wrap yourself up much or little, in four hours, sometimes in
two or three, you are despatched without languishing,’ (Z. and Z.,
Henry VIII. ^ vol. iv.)

It was supposed to be a purely English disease, and was attributed
by most foreigners to the sins of Englishmen — by Erasmus to the
filthiness of their streets and houses. But in 1 529, the year of Hubertus’
adventure, it reached and ravaged Europe. The English treatment,
owing to greater experience, was kinder and more agreeable than that
of the Continent. Dr. Kaye recommends ‘ competent open aier,’ and
only a little fire of ‘sweet wode as juniper, fyrre, or pine,’ with no
‘ smoderynge ’ the patient. If the sufferers are too anxious for sleep,
‘ call them by their names, and beate them with a rosemary braunche
or some other swete like thynge, . . . And if their strength be sore
wasted, let them smelle to an old swiet apple or hotte new bread . . .
dipped in wel smelling wyne.’ ‘ Beware of wyne, here and cyder,’
wntes Boorde.

60 (p. 347*) This was the Nuremberg Conference which, according
to Mr. Dickes’s ingenious theory, is commemorated m the Holbein
picture (see Illustrative Note 55). With regard to the devising of the
scheme, Hubertus Thomas relates an anecdote that has also been
attributed to the Elector Palatine Ludwig. (Cf. Hausser,) Having,
as he thought, discovered a feasible plan for reconciling the opposing
forces of Papalism and Lutheranism that were rending both the Diet
and the Empirb, Frederick betook himself one day before dawn to the
Emperor, who ‘ for thinking on the matter, had not slept for many

527

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES

nights.’ He waited outside the Imperial apartments tiU a groom
of the chamber came out, whom he asked if the Emperrar were awake.
Having obtained admittance : ‘Whither so early, dear Palsgrave ?’
asked Charles ; ‘What good news bring you?’ Frederick (5)ened
the matter to him, and the Emperor raised his hands with these words
to heaven ; Now blessed be God therefor I Call together Granvelle
and my other Councillors, and lay it before them. I will put on my
clothes, soon be with you.’ And the whole Council agreed with
acclamation.

(p. 354)- ‘ Jentaculum- abreakfaste. Jentare* To eate meate afore
dinner/ (Cooper’s Thesaurus^ 1584.) ‘Jantacuium ; A dynerc/
{Medulla GramaUce, 1499.) ‘ Merenda : meate eaten at aftemoone ;

a collation ; a noone meale ; a boyver/ (Cooper.) * Merenda :
a Nunmete/ {Medulla:) Two meals a day was the ordinary allow-
ance of this time. ‘ These od repasts,’ writes Harrison, * thanked be
God, are verie well left, and ech one, in manner (except, here and
there, some young hungne stomach, that cannot fast till dinner-timeX
contenteth himself with dinner and supper onelie. . . . With us
the nobilitie, gentrie and students, doo ordinarilie go to dinner at
eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or between five and
six at afternoon. The merchants dine and sup seldome before
twelve at noone, and six at night, especiallie in London. The
husbandmen dine at high noone, as they call it, and sup at seven
or eight : but out of the tearme in our universities, the scholars dine
at ten. As to the poorest sort, they generallie dine and sup when
they may, so that to talk of their order or repast, it were but a
needlesse matter.’ The French hours were rather earlier. A
proverb of the day, quoted in Fantc^ruel^ says :

Lever k cmq, disner k neuf,

Soupper k cinq, coucher k neuf.

Fait vivre Thomme d'ans nonanie qeuf.

But the hours were later altered to and ® In France,’ writes
Bizoni, ‘ it is the custom to eat five times a day : you break fest on
rising, you dine, you take a snack, you sup, and you have a last nieal
on going to bed.’ The Germans, an immemorialiy hungry peo|^
had also five meals a day, as Huhiertus himself tells us. {See s^ra^
P* 379-) It inay be added that the English meals made up in quahty
what they lacked in quantity. * In number of dishes and change of
meate,’ says Harrison again, ‘the nobilitie of Englande do most
exceede, sith there is no daye in maner that passeth over their heades»
wherein they have not onely beefe, mutton, veale, lambe, kidde, pork,
conie, capon, pigge, or so many of these as the season yieldeth ; but
also some portion of the redde or fellow deere, beside great var^tie
of iishe and wilde fowle, and thereto sundrie other delicates, wherein
the sweet hand of the sea-faring portingale is not wanting/

62 (p. 357). Henry VIII. was to set a fashion in this tossing-oflf t£
bumpers. ‘The truth is,’ wrote Owen Feltham in the next century.

528 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

‘the compleatest drinker in Europe is your English Gallant : there is
no such consumer of liquor as the quaffing off of his healths. Time
was, the Dutchman had the better of it, but of late he hath lost it
by prating too long over his pot. , . . But the Englishman charges
home on the sudden, swallows it whole, and, like a hasty tyde, fills
and flows himself, till the mad brain swims and tosses on the hasty
fume. ... So the one is drunk sooner, and the other longer ; as if,
striving to recover the wager, the Dutchman would still be the
perfectest Soaker.' (Lusoria^ ‘Even the Germans,' says Coryat,

‘ impose not such an inevitable necessity of drinking a whole health,
especially those of the greater size, as many of our English gallants
doe, a custome (m my opinion) most barbarous, and fitter to bee used
amongst the rude Scythians and Gothes than civill Christians : yet so
frequently practised in England, that I have often most heartily wished
it were clean abolished out of our land, as being no small blemish to
so renowned and well-governed a Kingdome as England is.' The
Germans, writes Morison, will ‘ spend an Age in swoping and sipping,’
but in great draughts ‘ our Countrymen put them downe.'

63 (p. 358). ‘As the Countie Palatine esteems the pleasure of
hunting with great greyhounds and mastiffs, please advertise the King
to send him two greyhounds and two mastiffs. They will be esteemed
as much as precious jewels.' (Letter of Cranmer to Cromwell,
June 10, 1533. Z. andP,^ Henry VIIJ.^ vol. vi.) English sporting dogs
were much prized in Germany at this time, especially those great
hounds whose size made them available for hunting wild boars and
bears Robert, Lord Leicester, sent a present of some to the
Margrave George Frederick of Brandenburg, with these words:
‘ Canes, quos requint Amplitude Vestra, misimus per hunc nuncium,
nempe aprorum et ursorum venationibus aptos duos, qui sauciat feras
venatur, unum. Hi, si Ampl. V. plaeuerunt (quod valde optamus),
plures utriusque generis, quando vultis et mandabitfs, mittentur.
Hibernicos item alios mittemus, cum pnmum illinc haberi possunt.'
(CL Voigt.) Samuel Kiechel saw in the Tower of London about two
hundred and fifty ‘ dockhen,' or mastiffs. Bizoni declared that English
dogs had the aspect of lions.

64 (p. 358). ‘I did not dare,' writes Chapuys, ‘to put any ques^
tions .to ■ him on account of the company present, hoping that he
would come back and see me, as he promised ; but either his busi-
ness, or the suspicions of the Council, have prevented him. He has
denied on oath that his master meant to marry in France. He is
to leave to-morrow for Pans to see his son ; and, for all the good
cheer I have made him, has been sorry to be detained so long here on
matters so unimportant.' (Letter to Charles V.) The Imperial
Ambassador also mentions the Polish youth as giving cause for
suspioon by the unnecessary length of his stay and the frequency of
his visits to Cromwell. With regard to both men, however, Chapuys
discovers comfort in the thought, probably not far from the truth, that

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 529

the warmth of their reception had been caused by the desire ai Henry
and his ministers ‘to make people believe that they have mat intelli-
gence with Germany,' (Z. and P., Henry VIII., voL vi.)

65 (P- Monasteries seem often to have proved periknis

shelters for the unwary traveller. Thus, on one occasion when
Hubertus and his master were exploring the recesses of a Mona^i^
Church near Cambray, they suddenly became aware of a man in
chains, who so terrified them by his rattlings that they Sf^ang back
all pale and horror-stricken. When they finally ventured into the
‘ horrible hole ' they found a nobleman of East Friesland. Having
halted here (so he told them) a few days before, he had partaken of
supper with the Provost, cheerfully singing the while in Friesland feshlon
and drinking perhaps somewhat excessively. The Provost repeatedly
asked him to leave his horse behind, but this he declined to do, having
plenty of money in his pocket. Instead, ‘after the cust<Hn of tl^
Germans when they are full,' he raised his hand in the air and
shouted ; whereupon the cleric and twelve peasants overpowered
and, on the plea of madness, imprisoned him in this cell, appropriatii^
both horse and money. Finding that the prisoner, wh^ released,
showed no signs of insanity beyond ‘ eating above measure much,* the
Palsgrave compelled the Provost to disgorge his spoil.

66 (p. 371). Montluc spoke highly of the new recruits : ‘D'aoltres
en ay veu parvenir, qui ont pourt6 la pique k six ftancs de paye, fere
des actes si bellicqueux, et se sont trov6s si cappahles, qu'il y en a eu
prou qu'estaienct fiez de pouvres laboreurs et se sont mis devanl
beaucoup de nobles pour leur hardiesse et vertu.* Brant6me also vms
enthusiastic : ‘ Je pense qu'il n'y a rien de si brave et si superbe k
voir qu’un gentil soldat. . . . tirer son harquebuzade, tout nod,
d6sarm6, aussi rdsolument que les mieux armez. . . . Et ce qiMs
j’admire autant en ces fantassins, c'est que vous verrez des jeunes
gens sortir des villages, des boutiques, des escoies, des posies, «fes
forges, des escuries . . . ils n'ont pas plus tost demeurez pansy cette
infanterie quelques temps que vous les voyez aussitost feictz, aguenriz,
fagonnez que, de rien qu ils estoient, vienn^at k estre capitaines et
esgaux aux gentilshommes.' (Pss Coronnels Pran^aisJ) Giitstiniaxii,
on the other hand, was critical : ‘ The French legionaries are notiimg

*hut peasants, brought up in servitude, with no expeirienc^ six^rer of
the practice of arms ; and since they pass at a bound frosn utter
subjection to the freedom and license of war, it happen^ as in
sudden changes, that they no longer obey their masters.'
maseo^ t. i.) Montluc probably went to the root of the matter In his
later comment. The invention was excellent, he declared, had it
been well followed up ; but the regulations and laws were properly
observed for a time only, and afterwards all fdl to pieces. And he
added the indisputable axiom that the true method to have a good
army of infantry is to keep the nation in a state of war.

67 (p. 384), See many letters in Z. and P Henry VIII*, xw.

530 THE ADVENTURES OF A PALSGRAVE

pt i.) There seems to have been question of a bargain, for, in
January 1538, Castillon wrote to Montmorency that Henry wished
to convey the impression ‘ que pour une seule bonne parole d’elle,
il seroit bien pour recouvrer le royaume de Dannemarke.’ Frederick
formed apparently a convenient screen for the intrigues and indecisions
of Charles. Compare Wriothesley’s description of his conversation
with Queen Maria : * The Chancellour [he told her] said that

thEmperour had in this matyer of thalliaunce with the Duchesse of
Millain, declared his hole mynde and resolution to the Countie
Palantyne Frederyke, and that the said Countie had taken his leave,
and wold addresse hetherwardes shortely. The Kinges Majestic
knoweth that the said Countye was not yet com to thEmperour,
whenne the said Chancellour said that he had taken his leave.*
Maria replied that the Chancellor must have mistaken his ‘ arrant * :

* The letters conteyned, that thEmperours ful resolution in al thise
thinges stayed uppon tharryval in Spayne of the Countie Palantyne,
who as thenne was arryved, but nothing nere thEmperour ; because
His Majestic thought it mete, seing he hath marryed thelder suster,
and was at hande to speke with Him, for the more full perfectyon of
his resolution in all thinges that be to be remembered ; and that doon
(that is to saye), he being ones spoken withal, we should be adver-
tised incontinently, and with all diligence.* {State Papers^ Henry VIII. ^
vol. viii. pt. V. cont.) Wyatt also writes to Henry VIII. that, when the
Impenalists seek to win time or to ^ have a colour to stert out, they will
depend the matter upon a third person not present.* For instance, in
treating with the King for the Duchess of Milan, they depended the
matter now upon the Queen of Hungary, now upon Duke Frederick,
and now upon their ambassador, ‘ till they saw their purpose, and then
quailed the matter with that excuse that was long afore in sight, and
had nothing a do with the dependings that they pretended.* (L. and
P,y Henry VIII., vol. xiv. pt. li.) Charles is ever ‘ knitting one delay
to the tail of another,* writes Henry himself.

68 (p. 395). Frederick seems, despite the regrettable absence of
goblets, to have carried away a kindly and enduring recollection of
Henry VIII. ‘The Palsgrave showeth a singular affection to the
King’s Majesty,* wrote Sir Richard Morysine, some thirteen years,
later, in the reign of Edward VI. : ‘a constant memory of the great
goodness showed to him and to his family by the King’s Majestjr’s
most noble father. ... He said at his table, hishemet (hemd), that is,
his shirt, was never so nigh his skin as the King’s Majesty’s father
was, and should be while he had any breath in him, nigh his heart.*
In fact, the ‘ good old Palsgrave of the Rhene * (as Roger Ascham calls
him) could not, in these later years, do enough to show his love and
zeal for England and her ambassador. He ‘ hath so feasted me and
others that came at my desire,* continues Morysine, ‘ as he must think
me an ungrateful man if I make not as much suit as I can to purchase
him thanks from the King’s Majesty. His wife beareth the title of a

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 531

queen, and yet, by no intreaty, would he suffer her to wash with me
When we went a-hunting, he would needs I should leave my horse
and go in a waggon with him ; setting me in his lady’s place, and send-
ing her amongst her women. He came within a mile ctf
because I did not come to him ; and lay there three days ere I could
go to him.’ The fact that * his queen would fain have me to sexKl
or bring my wife thither,’ would seem, under the circumstances, to
have been very amiable of Dorothea. (Cf. Tytler, England under
Edward VI.)

69 (P- 395)- The English were famous for their fickleness in dress.
Boorde describes the Englishman as devoted to new fashions :

I am an English man, and naked I stand here,

Musyng in my mynde what rayment I shal were ;

For now I wyll were thys, and now I wyl were that ;

Now I wyl were I cannot td what.

All new fashyons be plesaunt to me ;

I wyl have them, whether I thryve or thee.

‘ We English,’ writes Coryat, ‘ use many more colours then are in the
rainbow ; all the most light, garish, and unseemely colours that arc m
the world. Also for fashion we are much inferiour. . . . For we
weare more phantasticall fashions than any Nation under the Sunne
doth, the French oneiy excepted ; which hath given occasion both to
the Venetian and other Italians to brand the Englishman with a notable
marke of levity, by painting him starke naked with a paire shears in
his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vaine inventkm
of his braine-sicke head, not to comeliness and decorum.’ In boc^ks,
says Wilson, men are painted out in their colours, and the English-
man’s speciality is ‘for feeding and chaunging for apparell.’ (Ar^ of
Rketoriquel^ Every man might choose his fashions for himself. A
man is as free to sin in Italy, declares Roger Ascham, * as it is free in
the citie of London to chose without all blame, whether a man lust to
weare shoo or pantocle.’ {The Scholemaster.)

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

70 {p. 415). Carriages were still regarded in Germany as an
effeminate luxury. ‘ Who knows,’ writes Fischart ironically, ‘ he might
get tired, like our coach-youths of to-day, wfaereover Max Fuck^
complains in his stud-book, that, since people have taken to carriages,
there are no more good saddle-horses to be had in Germany.’
{Geschichtsklitterung.) In some parts of the Empire their use was
entirely prohibited, under pain of incurring the punishment of felony.
Thus, even in 1588, some twenty years after this expe<btion of Hans,
Duke Julius of Brunswick published an order by which his vassak
were forbidden to use carriages, on the ground that thereby disdplme
and skiU in riding had been almost lost : ‘ the principal cause of this

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

532

is that our vassals, servants, and kinsmen, without distinction, young
and old, have dared to give themselves up to indolence and to driving
in coaches, and that few of them provide themselves with well-equipped
riding-horses, and with skilful experienced servants, and boys
acquainted with the roads.’ (Cf. Beckmann.) The reason of the
sudden popularity of vehicles was that the builders had learned to swing
the bodies in straps, which made the jolting less. Germany appears
to have set the fashion in the matter of carriages throughout Europe.
*Of late years,’ writes Stow, ‘the use of coaches, brought out of
Germany, is taken up, and made so common as there is neither dis-
tinction of time nor difference of persons observed ; for the world runs
on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.’ In
Spain, however, so late as 1623, their abolition was still regarded as a
possible reform, and a member of the Cortes deplored their use to
King Philip IV. ‘ With respect to coaches, great evil is caused and
offence given to God, seeing the disquiet they bring to women who
own them ; for they never stay at home, but leave their children and
servants to run riot with the evil example of the mistress being always
gadding abroad. The art of horsemanship is dying out, and those
who ought to be mounted crowd, six or eight of them together, in a
coach, talking to wenches rather than learning how to ride. Very
different gentlemen, indeed, will they grow up who have all their youth
been lolling about in coaches instead of riding.^ {Apuntamientos of
Lison y Biedma, quoted by Major Martin Hume in his Court oj
Philip IV,)

71 (p. 424). Garlands were much beloved in Germany. At
wedding feasts, says Fynes Morison, ‘the young men on theire
bareheades weare krantzes ; that, is Garlands of Roses, both in winter
and sommer, presented them for a favour by the bryde at the dore of
her house, as wee present gloves. The women likewise weare Garlands
of Roses on theire heades, and Chayns about their neckes. And
during the Feast the young men and virgins, for tokens of love,
exchanged garlandes, and the young men sometymes wore the
virgins Chaynes, as also the Bndegrome on the first day of the
Feast did weare the Bride’s Coronet of Gold and Pearles on his bare
head.’ Indeed, even on less gay occasions, ‘ the Gentlewomen weare a
border of pearle, and all other, from the highest to the lowest, com-
monly weare garlands of roses (which they call Crantzes). For they
keepe Roses all winter in little pots of earth, whereof they open one
each Saturday at night, and distribute the Roses among the women
of the house, to the very kitchin maide ; others keepe them all in one
pot, and weekely take as many roses as they neede, and cover the
rest, keeping them fresh till the next Summer. And the ^common sort
mingle guilded nutmegs with these Roses, and make garlands thereof.
Ofily women weare these garlands in Winter, but in Summer time men
of the better sort weare them within doores, and men of the common
sort weare them going abroade.’ The two Schwarz’s of Augsburg

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 533

describe themselves constantly in such garlands; at a ball in
golden wreath wound with a golden chain ’ ; at a shooting contest
in a wreath of white and red ; at a wedding in a wreath df gold
and scarlet ribbons ; travelling in the Tyrol in a yellow wreath with
black plumes ; and even driving in a sledge wearing " instead of a
hat a green garland run with gold thread.’ {Kkiderbiicher MaMs,
und Vett, Conr, Schwarzens^ in Scheible’s Kloster^ bd. vi.) The use
of roses for lovers’ garlands was a very ancient German custom. * He
whose heart bums with love should wear a crown of roses,’ wrdfce
Tannhauser; and Walther von der Vogelweide gave his lady a
garland of roses for her adornment. ‘ Heart’s dearest little son,
writes Duchess Sidonia of Saxony to Duke George, ^forget not the
rose-wreath and also 12 Ave Marias and at least 5 paternosters.
And if all is well with thee, think also of thy feithful mother. . .
Duchess Anna of Brandenburg sends two rose garlands to comfort
and adorn Albert Achilles at the siege of Neuss, and he m return
sends her ‘a big, ' apple-green {<tppfekgrG€n)^ well-paced, well-
mannered palfrey.’ {PT^vaibriefe^ The custom was the same in
France : ‘ II ne fust jour,’ says the old French romance, Lanceic^
en hiver ou et 6 , n’eust au matin un chapel de fresches roses stir la
teste,’ The word krantz was also used in England. The lines In
Hamlet^ ‘ allow’d her virgin rites,’ first read * virgin crants.’ (Cf. Dr,
Johnson’s Notes on Shakespeare, ed Prof. W. Raleigh.)

72 (p. 425). Not all young courtiers were as reluctant as Hans
to take the office of Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Compare Jt»g
von Ehingen’s charming story of how he begged his new master,
Duke Albrecht of Austria, to g^ve him some small post near his
person, if only for the sake of impressing the old master, Duke
Sigismund. * And the prince began to look at me somewhat tendariy,
and laughed, and said, with a short, quick speech, and his usual oath :

“ God’s hanging goose, that shall be.” And he called to a nobleman
who was one of his chamberlains, and said ; Go, bring the keys of
my apartments, and give them to Ehingen.” This came to pas% and
I was thus received by His Highness among the t^her lords and
nobles in His Highness’s chambers. And when my lord Duke
Sigmund came, I took a great many keys to myself and wailed
most industriously, as a gentleman of the bedchamber, cm my
gracious lord, Duke Albrecht : wherefore I was held dF better acamnt
by Duke Sigmund and his princely hou^hold. But when my gracioiis
lord, Duke Albrecht, was alone in his apartments and saw me thus
blossoming forth, then did His Highness laugh marvellously thereat,
and, with me and others who were by, practise many comic^ ccwn-
pliments and brandishings. Thus I gave and took with His
Highness and served him acceptably, as it well beseems a young
courtier to do.’ {JReisen nach der Rztterschaft.)

73 (p. 434). ‘ When a man takes out a woman to daunce,’ wrte

Fynes Morison, ‘he gently putts her Arme under cme of his, and

AN EPIC OF DEBTS

534

other under her other Arme, and modestly imbraceth her, and
sometymes in lesse solemne meetinges of more liberty the men, in
jolity, with inarticulate voyces of Joye, will catch the wemen by the
middle, and lift them up ’ (Shakespeare^ s Europe,) Montaigne also
describes the citizens of Augsburg dancing • ‘ Nous vismes aussi la
danse de cef assemblee : ce ne furent qu’ Alemandes : ils les rompent
a chaque bout de champ, et ram^nent seoir les dames qui sont assises
en des bancs qui sont par les costes de la sale, k deus rangs, converts
de drap rouge : eus ne se meslent pas k elles. Apr^s avoir faict une
petite pose, ils les vont reprendre ; ils baisent leurs meins, les dames
les regoivent sans baiser les leurs, et puis leur metant la mein sous
Paisselle, les embrassent et jomgnent les joues par le cost4, et les
dames leur metent la mem droite sur Pespaule. Ils dansent et les
entretiennent, tout descouverts, et non fort richement vestus.’ (Journal.)
The dance seems to have resembled the ‘ branle du bouquet,’ which
Cotgrave expounds as ‘the kissing daunce, for there is much kissing
in it.’ In Shakespeare’s Henry F 7 //., at the Cardinal’s banquet, the
King says to Anne Boleyn :

Sweetheart,

I were unmannerly to take you out,

And not to kiss you.

Lovel puts the matter more clearly :

What foole would daunce,

If that when daunce is doone.

He may not have at ladyes lips
That which in daunce he wonne?

[Dialogue between Custom and Veritie, 1581.)

Felix Platter tells of a ball at Montpellier where was a girl who, though
pretty enough, had a long nose, ‘ whence her partner had much ado
to kiss her on the lips, as is the custom.’ And Noel du Fail makes
the apothecary give his wife a pillule as she starts for the dance, ‘ afin,
lui dit-il, que si quelque seigneur vous baise, vous aiez I’haleine plus
douce et soeve que pas une de vos compagnes.’ (Eutrapel^ PApothicaire
d? Angers. Cf. Bonnaff6.)

74 (p. 436). Beatis describes the great palace of the Fuggers as
‘adorned with marbles of many hues ; the face that turns to the
street shows histories painted with much gold and colour. The roof
is all of copper. Besides many rooms adorned in German fashion
are some most beautiful d la itahana and well conceived.’ ‘ How
great is the splendour in Anton Fugger’s house !’ wrote the Beatus
Rhenanus. ‘ It is for the most part vaulted, and supported by marble
pillars. What shall I say of the vast and glorious apartments, of the
chambers and halls, and even of the private room of the master of
the house, which, as well for its gilded woodwork as for its other
adornments and for the extraordinary magnificence of the bed, is the
most beautiful of all ? ’ Raymond Fugger’s mansion, also, was no less

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 535

royal, and was so full of pictures, medals, and ancient marbles,
‘ that I think even in Italy one would not find more in the house of
one man,’ (Letter in Scheible’s Kloster^ vi.) Montaigne contributes
a sober encomium: ‘Les Foulcres qui sont plusieurs, & tous tr^-
riches, tienent les principaux rengs de cete ville li. Nous vismes
aussi deus sales en leur maison, Pune haute, grande, pavde de
marbre ; Pautre basse, riche de m^dailles antiques & modemes, avec
une chambrette au bout. Ce sont des plus riches pieces que j’aye
jamais veues.’ {Journal.)

75 (p. 479). ‘ Si on voyait en France un homme de quality habiM

de verd, on penseroit qu’il eust le cerveau un peu gaillard : au lieu
qu’en plusieurs lieux d’Allemagne cest habit semble sentir son bien.’
So writes Henri Estienne in the Apologie (1566). But in the
Dialogues of 1578 he laments that green, formerly ‘r^servde aux fols,’
has now, in imitation of Germany, become the fashionable hue. * The
Gentlemen delight in light colours,’ says Morison, ‘ and when I per-
swaded a familiar friend that blacke and darke colours were more
comely, he answered me, that the variety of colours shewed the
variety of Gods workes. And the Gentlemen weare Italian silkes and
velvets of these colours, but most commonly English cloth, for the
most part of yellow or greene colour.’ {Itinerary^) Red was also a
very favourite hue for weddings in Germany : ' I dressed myself at
the night dance,’ writes Veit Conrad Schwarz in 1560, ‘to please the
bridegroom, all in red, like himself, all satin guarded mth satin . . .
and the shoes were likewise red and pointed.’ {Kldderlmcker.^
in' Scheible’s Kloster, bd. vi.)

LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED OR QUOTED
FREQUENTLY IN THE NOTES

The names of all books have been given as briefly as possible, with a view to
identification only. A list of the principal abbreviations employed will be found at
the end.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES

SCHASCHEK ‘ Commentarius brevis et jucundus,’ etc (Olmiitz, 1577.)

and Tetzel, Gabriel. ‘ Commentarii,’ ed. Schmeller as ‘ Leo von

Rozmital : Ritter-, Hof- und Pilger-Reise, I4.6S-7- (L V.S. Bd. 7, 1844.)
Eyb, Ludwig von, the Younger [?]. ‘ Geschichten und Taten Wilwolts
von Scbaumburg,’ ed Keller. (L.V.S, Bd. 50, 1S59.)

Thomas, Hubertus, Leodius. ‘Annalium de vita et rebus gestis illus-
trissimi Principis Friderici II., Elect. Palat,’ etc. (Frankfort, 1624.)

* Spiggel des Humors grosser Potentaten,’ etc. (Leipzig, 1629 )

‘ Denkwurdigkeiten,’ ed. Bulow, 1849, as ‘Ein Fiirstenspiegel.’

ScHWEiNiCHEN, Hans VON. ‘ Begebenheiten,’ ed. Busching, 1820, as
*• Lieben, Lust und Leben der Deutschen des XVI. Jhdt.’

‘ Denkwurdigkeiten,* ed. Oesterley, 1878.

CONTEMPORARY OR EARLY WRITERS

Aarssens, F. van. ‘ A Journey into Spain, x6yo ’

^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini. (Pius II.) * Historia Bohemica.’

‘ Historia de Europa.’ (And other works.)

Ascham, Roger. "Works,’ ed. Giles.

Aulnoy, Mme. d’. " Madrid vers la fin du 17® S.,’ ed. Mme. B. Carey.

"The Lady’s Travels into Spam.’ Eng. tr. 1774.

Auton, Jean d’. ‘ Chroniques.’

" Bayart, Chronique de. Par Le Loyal Serviteur.” ’

Beatis, a. de. " Reise des Kard. Luigi d’Aragona, Jjrzy,’ ed. L. Pastor.
Berlichingen, Gotz von. " Lebensbeschreibung.’

Bizoni, B (Travels of the Marchese Giustiniani, 1606 : see Rodocanachi.)
Boemus Aubanus, Joannes. 'Omnium Gentium Mores,’ 1536.

Boorde, Andrew. ‘ Introduction of Knowledge.’ (E.E.T.S., vol. 10.)
'Bourgeois de Paris, Journal d’un, X404r-4g^

' Bourgeois de Paris, Journal d’un,

Brandt, Sebastian. ' Beschreibung von Deutschland,’

537

LIST OF BOOKS

BrantomEj P. de Bourdeilles, le Sr* de. * CEuvres completes,’
Browne, Sir Thomas. ‘Vulgar and Common Errors.’

ButZBACH, J. ‘ Life,’ ed. Becker as ‘ Chronica ernes fahrenden Schillers.’
Calvete de Estrella. * Viaje del Principe Phelippe,

Casola, Canon Pietro. ‘ Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I4g4^ tr. M. Newett.
Chastellain, G. ‘ Chronique des Dues de Bourgogne,’ ed Lettenhove.
COMMYNES, P. DE. ‘ The History of,’ Eng. by T. Danett, 1596.
CONTARINI, Carlo. ‘ Itinerano, 1S26." (See Marino Sanuto, t 36.)
Corio, Bernardino ‘ Histona di Milano— /j'oo.*

Cory at, Thomas. ‘Crudities,’ 1611.

CosTUMi DI Londra. (See Marino Sanuto, 1. 15, and Romanin, t. V,}

‘ Debat des Heraulx’ (by Charles d’Orleans?), tr. H. Pyne.

Deichsler, H. ‘ Niirnberger Kronik.* (Chr. D.S. Bd. XI.)

Dbschamps, Eustache. ‘ CEuvres,’ ed. Saint Hilaire.

Desrey, P. ‘ Grandes Chroniques.’

* Diario Ferrarese.’ (Muratori, * Rer. Ital. Script.* t. 24.)

Du Bellay, Martin. ‘Memoires.’

Ehingen, Jorg V. ‘ Reisen nach d. Ritterschaft, ciic. (L-V.S. Bd. L)

Erasmus, D, * Epistles,’ tr. Nichols (and other eds.).

* Colloquies,’ tr. L’Estrange, 1680 (and other eds.).

Estienne, Henri. ‘Apologie pour H^rodote.’

Eyb, Ludwig v., the Elder. ‘ Denkwurdigkeiteuj’ed. Hdaar<H.V.E Bd. 1 .)
Fabri, Felix. ‘ Wanderings, circ. 1480.^ tr. A. Stewart
Fabyan, Robert. * New Chronicles/

Fleurangb, R. de la Marck, Sr. de. ‘Mems. dujenne Advantoremc.’
Fortescue, Sir John. ‘ The Governance of En^and,* ed. Plummer.
Franck, Seb. ‘ Chronica. Zeitbuch und Gesdiichtbibell,' 1536.

‘Weltbuch,’ 1567.

Gaguin, R. ‘ Chroniques de France.’

Grimeston, Edward. * Historic of the Netherlands,’ 1609.

Grunbeck. ‘ Historia Fndenci et Maximiliani ’ (in Chmel, O.G.F. Bd. I.)u
Guevara, A. de. ‘ Familiar Epistles,’ tr. Hellowes, 1574.

Guicciardini, Lod. ‘ Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bas^’ 1588-
HALL, Edward. ‘ Chronicle.*

Harff, -Arnold von. ‘ Itinerary, I4g6 - g ,* ed. Von Grootc ,

Harrison, W. ‘ Desc. of Britaine.’ (Prefixed to Holinsl^’s Chr., iSTf*)
Hentzner, P. ‘ Itinerarium Germaniae, etc.,

‘ Travels in England dur. Reign of Elizabeth,’ tr. Walpole.

HeRBBRSTEIN, Sig. von. ‘Selbstbiographie.’ (‘Font. Rer. Austr.’ Th. I., Bd. L)
Heylyn, Peter. ‘ Microcosmos ’ (Cosmography), 1621.

Hildesheim, John of. ‘ Three Kir^ of Colc^e,’ ed. H<»stmann.

Hoby, Sir Thomas. * Travail and lif, J 547 -^

Holinshed, R. ‘Chronicles.’

Howell, James. ‘Epistolse Ho-EHanse; Familiar L^eis,’ 1645*

* Instructions for Forreine Travell,’ 1642.

* Survay of the Signorie of Venice,’ 1651.

Jovius, Paulus. ‘Historiae sui Temporis,’ 1550.

Kiechel, Samuel. ‘ Reisen, (L-V.S. Bd. 86.)

Enolles, R. * The Generali Historic of the Turkes,’ 1603.

GENTLEMEN ERRANT

538

Koelhoff, J. ‘ Cronica . . . van Coellen ’ (in Chr, D.S. Bd. XIV ),

KuNiG VON Vach, Hermann, ‘ Wallfahrtsbuch ’ (SeeHabler.)

La BROCQUifeRE, Bert. de. * Travels to Palestine, 1432,^ tr. Johnes.
Lalaing, a. de. ‘ Voyage de Philippe le Beau, 1303.^ (See Gachard, t. I.)
La Marche, Olivier de. ‘M^moires.’

Machiavelli, N. ‘The Arte of Warre/ tr. Peter Whitehorne, 1560,
ed. H.C. Gust, ‘ in Tudor Translations."

Mariana, Juan. ‘ History of Spain,’ tr. Stevens, 1699.

Martyr, Peter . . . de Angleria. ‘ Opus Epistolarum,’ 1530.
Maqu^riau, R. ‘ Chromque de la Maison de Bourgogne ’

Maupoint, Jean. ‘Journal.’

Mezeray, F. de. ‘ Histoire de France,’ 1643.

Molinbt, J. * Chroniques.’

Monstrelet, E. de. ‘ Cronicques de France ’ (with sup. to 1467).
Montaigne, Michel de. ‘ Essayes,’ tr. John Florio, 1603.

‘Journal du Voyage, 1380-^81 y ed, D’ Ancona.

Montluc, Blaise de. * Commentaues.’

MoRisoN, Fynes. ‘ Itinerary, x6jj-

‘ Shakespeare’s Europe.’ Unpublished Chapters of F. M., ed, Hughes.

Munster, Sebastian. ‘ Cosmographia,’ 1544*

‘Musical Pilgrim,’ The ‘The Way unto Sent Jamez in Galis.’ (In
‘Purchas, his Pilgrimes,’ ed. of 1625.)

Navagbro, Andrea. ‘ Viaggio fatto (1326) in Espagna et in Francia,’ 1563.
Nucius, Nicander. ‘ Travels, circ. 1340, (Camden Society, Vol. 17.)

‘ Paston Letters,’ ed. J. Gairdner.

Payen, Lieut.-G^n. ‘Voyages,

Perlin, ifisTiENNE ‘ Description d’ Angleterre, 1338 ’

Platter, FiiLix. ‘M^moires’ (Soc. d. Bibliophiles de Montpellier.)
Platter, Thomas. ‘ Lebensbeschreibung,’ ed Duntzer.

PopPEL, Niklas. (See Krone ; and cf. Liske ; ‘ Viajes . • . por Espafla.’)

Ray, John. * Travels, 1663.^

‘ Relation of England, circ. i$oo ’ [by F. Capella ?]. (Camden Soc. vol. 37.)
Rieter, Seb. Pilgrimage, 1462 : m ‘ Reisebuch d. Fam. R.’ (L. V.S. Bd. 168.)
Sainte Palaye, Lacurne de. ‘M^m. sur I’ancienne Chevalerie,’ 1781.
Sandoval, P. de. ‘ History of Charles V.’ Eng. by Stevens, 1703.
Sanuto, Marino, the Younger. ‘ I Diarii, 1496-1333,"

S astro w, Bart. ‘ Herkommen, Geburt und Lauff,’ ed. Mohnike.

Schedel, H. ‘ Registrum Libri Cronicarum,’ 1493.

Sleidanus, j. ‘ Hist, of the Reformation,’ Eng. by E. Bohun, 1689
‘ Speierische Chronik,' (In Mone’s ‘ Quellensammlung zur Bad. Gesch.’ Bd. I.)
Starkey, T. ‘ Dialogue of England.’ (E.E.T.S., vol. 32.)

Stow, John. ‘ Survay of London,’ 1598.

Swinburne, Henry. ‘ Travels through Spain, 1773-6 ’

Tafur, Pero. ‘ Andangas k Viajes, 1433" (‘ Coleccionde Libros Espafioles
raros 6 curiosos,’ t VIII ; and cf. Habler, Z.S.Z. Bd. IV,)

Vettori, Francesco. ‘ Viaggio di Alemagna, 1307"

Villars, Madame de. ‘ Lettres, 1679-81"

Vital, Laurent. ‘ Voyage de Charles Quint, 13x8 " (See Gachard, t. III.)
‘ Voyage de la Saincte Cyt6 de Hi^rusalem, x48o^ pub. Schefer.

LIST OF BOOKS

539

‘ Voyage de Jherusalem, Le Grant.’ Ed. Le Huen, 14S6, Breydenbach, 1517,
‘ Voyages historiques (cartes par M. de B. F.),’ 169S.

Wey, W. * Itineranes to Jerusalem and Compostella,

WiERSTRAAT, C. ‘ Histori d. Beleegs v. d. Nuis.’ (Chr. D.S. Bd. XX.)
Wratislaw, a. ‘ Diary of an Embassy fr. K. George of Bohemia,
WuRTEMBERG, DuKES OF. ‘ Joumals, i 6 io^ ed. W. B, Rye.

‘ Zimmerische Chronik.’ (L.V.S. Bd.

Zorn, F. R. ‘ Wormser Chronik.’ (L.V.S. Bd. 43.)

COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

Albert. ‘ Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti . . . nel Secolo XVI.’

‘ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.’

‘ Archives cuneuses de I’Histoire de France.’

‘ Calendar of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII.,’ ed. Brewer.

‘ Calendar of State Papers, Venetian,’ ed. H. F. Brown.

‘ Chroniken der deutschen Stadte,’ ed. Hegel.

‘ Fontes Rerum Austriacarum.’

Freher and Strove. * Germanicarum Rerum Scriptores,’ 1717.
Gachard. ‘ Collection des Voyages des Souverains des Pays-Bas.’
Godefroy * Lettres de Louis XIL’

Hofler. ‘ Venetianischen Depeschen.’

Lammer. ‘ Monumenta Vaticana.’

Lanz. * Correspondenz K. ICarls V.’ ^ ^

Le Glay. * Correspondance de Maximilien et de Marguerite d’Atttrkhc,’
‘ Privatbriefe, Deutsche, d. Mittelalters.,’ ed. Steinhaasen.

Rymer. ‘Foedera.’

‘ State Papers, Henry VIII.’ (pub by Govt., 1830-52.)

Tommaseo. ‘ Relations des Ambassadeurs V^tiens.’

(Besides various historical publications cited in the Notes.)

MODERN WORKS
Armstrong. ‘ The Emperor Charles V.*

Babeau. ‘ Les Voyageurs en France.’ T »

Bachmann. ‘ Deutsche Reichsgeschichte im Z. I.

Barthold. * Georg v. Fnindsberg : deutsche Knegshandwmrk z. Zeit d. Ket- 1
Baumgarten. ' Geschichte Karls V.’ ^ ^

Beckmann. ‘ History of Inventions and Discoveries.

BlS ^mst. of the People of the Netherlands,’ tr. Bierstadt and Putnam.
BonnaffI ‘ Voyages et Voy^eurs de la Renaiss^w,^

Bosch. ‘ Kinderleben in der deutsdien Vergangenhmt ^

Burke. ^ History of Spain to Death of Ferdinand the Cathohc.

‘ Cambridge History.’ Vols. I., H-, and III.

Fisher. (See -Political History,* vol V.)

FraKNOI. ' Matthias Corvinus.’

Franklin. ‘ La Vie Priv& d’autrefois.’ .. .eE.TS.^

Furnivall. ‘ Manners and Meals ’ (a^ oOter Tola M E.E.T.b.).

Grunhagbn. ‘ Geschichte Schlesira^’ Mch ComportdL’

Habler. ‘ Wall&hrtsbuch - . . und Pilgerr^ d. .

SaktfeldRR. ‘DerHistorikerHubertusltomasLeodins. (F-D-G- XXV.)

GENTLEMEN ERRANT

540

Hausser. ‘ GescWchte der Rheinischen Pfalz.’

Hecker. * Epidemics of the Middle Ages,’ tr. Babington.

Horky. ‘ Des Bohmischen Freiherrs Low v. Rozmital DenkwUrdigkeiten,’
1824. (An account of the Journey based wholly on Schaschek.)

Janssen. * Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes.’

JUSSERAND. ‘Sports et Jeux d’exercice dans Tancienne France.’

Kirk. ‘ History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.’

Krone. ‘ Land und Leute West Europas.’ (Z.S.Z Bd. IV.)

Lavisse. ‘ Histoire de France.’

ET Rambaud. * Histoire Generale.’

Lecoy de la Marche. ‘ Le roi Rend.’

Lettenhove, Kervyn de. ‘ Histoire de Flandre ’

Liebe. ‘ Der Soldat in der deutschen Vergangenheit.’

Maulde La Claviere. ‘ Histoire de Louis XII.’

Moeller. EUonore d’Autriche et de Bourgogne.’

Oman. * Art of War ; The Middle Ages.’

‘ Warwick, the Kingmaker.’ (And see ‘Political Hist.,* Vol. IV.)

Palacky. ‘ Geschichte von Bohmen.’

Pastor ‘ Geschichte der Papste.’ (Eng. tr. by Antrobus )

‘ Erlauterungen . . . zu Janssens Geschichte.’

Peltzer. ‘ Albrecht Durer und Friedrich II. von der Pfalz.’ (In ‘ Studien
zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte,’ Heft 61, 1905.)

* Political History.’ Vol. IV., ed. Oman. Vol. V., ed. Fisher.

Ranke. ‘ Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation.’
Rodocanachi. ‘ Aventures d’un grand Seigneur Italian. ’

Rohricht. ‘ Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem Heiligen Lande.’

Romanin. ‘ Storia documentata di Venezia.’

Sach. ‘ Deutsches Leben in der Vergangenheit.’

Sayous. * Histoire gdndrale des Hongrois.’

Schultz. ‘ Deutsches Leben im 14. und 15. Jhdt ’

Szamota. * Old Hungarian Travellers in Europe, iS3^i770.^

XJlmann. * Kaiser Maximilian I.’

‘ Der unbekannte Verfasser der Geschichten und Thaten Wilwolts von

Schaumburg.’ (Sybel’s ‘ Hist. Zeitschrift,’ Bd. III.)

Voigt. ‘ Enea Silvio . . . als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter.’

‘ Fiirstliche Festlichkeiten.’ (‘ Historisches Taschenbuch,’ Bd. VI.)

Wegele. * Geschichte d. Deutschen Historiographie.’

‘ Vortrage und Abhandlungen,’ ed. Eckart.

WiARDA. * Ostfriesische Geschichte.’

ZwiEDINCK-SuDENHORST. ‘ Kriegsbildet aus d. Zeit d. Landsknechte.’

Principal Abbreviations Employed

Chr. D. S. * Chroniken der Deutschen Stadte.*

£. £. T. S. Early Eng'lish Text Society.

F. D. G. * Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte.'

H. V. B. Historischer Verem, Bamberg. * Quelleusammlung.'

L V. S, Literarischer Verein m Stuttgart. ‘Bibliothek.^

L. and P. * Calendar of Letters and Papers.* (See Collections.)

D. G. F. ‘ (istreichischer Geachichtsforscher.*

S. P. * Calendar of State Papers.* (See Collections.)

Z. S. Z. Zwiedinck-Sttdenhorst's * Zeitschrift fhr AUgemeine Geschichte.*

INDEX

The ttahc figures

A Becket, Thomas, 32, 190, 512
Adriatic, The, sea-storehouse of, 113
Aerschot, The city of, 130, 178
African slaves, Trade in, 79
Agrippa, Cornelius, his experiences
among the Catalans, 100
Aix-la-Chapelle, 15, 174, 307
Albert Achilles of Brandenburg, 12,
X 23 , X 47 , -^^ 4 , 211 \ becomes Wil-
wolt's patron, 155
Albrecht of Saxony, Duke, 118, 220,
222 ; the troops of, 129, 507 ;
their weapons, 176, 510 ; m the
Netherlands, 173-2 17 , in Fries-
land, 231-4 ; death of, 234
Alcagar Ceguer and Quivir, 79
Alcaiceria, The, 322
Alexander VI., Pope, 133, 207
Alfonso I., Duke of Ferrara, 341
Alfonso V., of Portugal, 78, 118 ; his
civet-cats, 91
Alhambra, The, 322
Aljaferia, The,

Amboise, 55, 324
Angers, The Castle of, 53
Angoultoe, Charles, Duke of,

Anjou, Charles of, 59 ; Henry of,
426, 520

Anna, Queen of Himgary, 243, 328,
$44

Anne Boleyn, Queen, 354
Anne of Brittany. See Brittany
Anne of Cleves, Queen. See Cleves
Annis, 438

Anspach, 12, 432 ; George Frederick,
Margrave of, 432

Anthony, the Great Bastard, 18, 26, 28
Antwerp, the wealth of, 27
ApoUonia, 268

Aragon, Cardinal Louis of, 293
Aragon, civil war in, 7 i» 9 ® J the
royal Order of, 98
Arc, Joan of, 59, 62
Archer’s Court, The Manor o:^ 493
Amemuyden, 293
Arnold, Duke. See Egmond
Amsdorf, 465, 466

rtfer io footnotes

Arras, 200 ; capture of, 201-5
Arthur of Wales, Princ^ 255
Asch, 130

Ascham, Roger, 227 , 494, 528; hxs
descnption of Mary of Hungary,
344

Astasio, Don Pedro, 275
Augsburg, 332, 432 ; Diets oi^ 23a,
345> 3^x ; the Imperial entry
346 ; the Court oi^ 406; the
Weinmarkt at, 433 \ the lad^ of,
434 ; the dances 533
Avignon, 103

Barbarossa, 364
Barbary, The Moors 80
BarcelOTia, loi, 261, 262, 364 ; date-
palms of, 102 ; plague In, 306
Barnacle Birds, 48, 500
Battenburg, The fortress o^ 217
Bavaria, ; Duke William I. of,
303 ; George 349 ; Albert III.

of, 430

Bavarian Succession, The, stnigg^
for, 273, 520, 523

Bayard, Chevalier de, 133, 272 , 277 ,
222, 255

Bayonne, 62, 315, 572
Beatis, Antonio de, 24 , 225 , 222, 252 ,
255 , 225 , 225 , 501, 534
Beaugency, 56
Beauvau, Jean, 53

Bedchamb^, The, ol&ce of gentleman
0% 425, 533 ^

Bedford, Jacqudine, Duchess o^ 39

Belgrade, 329

Bellini, Gian, 104

Bellpuig, 364

Beliranefa, The, 71, 72

Berlichingen, Gdtz v<»i, 124, 159*

^325

Beverwijk, 179

Bidandt, Herr von, daughter, 450
Blaye, 61, 314
BIok, 56, 252
Blood-rain, 331, 422

541

INDEX

542

Bohemia in the fifteenth century, 6 ;

peculiarities of, 42 J revolt in, 8
Bohemians, their passion for danger-
ous feats, 23
Bologna, 331
Bona of Savoy, 37, 50
Bonner, Bishop, 382, 387
Boorde, Andrew, 34 , 44 , 62 , 70 , 86 ,
504, 525, 526
Bosnia, 329

Boulogne, attacked by Henry VII.,
206

Bourbon, The Constable of, 312 ,
330 ; Agnes, Duchess of, ai
Boussut, The Sire de, 254
Braga, 78, 91 ,

Brandenburg, Anna of, 12, 157, 533 ;

, Albert Achilles, see; Barbara of,
ISS ; Frederick of, 162, 308 ;
J oachim of, 349 J J ^hn Cicero
(Hans) of, 155, 164; John George
of, 431 ; John, M. of Custriu, 284
Braun, Christoph, 448, 456, 460
Brauweiler, The Monastery of, 450
Bread and Cheese Act of 1492, The,
178

Brederode, Franz van, 178, 182
Brenta Canal, The, 332
Brescia, 107
Breslau, 457, 480
Bneg, Duke George of, 423, 489
Brittany, 49 ; Anne of, 198, 199,
252, 266

Brocquiere, Bertrandondela, 164 , 269
Browne, Sir Thomas, 33 , 93 , 389 , 402 ,
505

Bruges, 174, 182 ; the festivities of, 28;

a custom m, 195, 198, 514
Bruno, Giordano, 497
Brussels, 17, 222, 277 ; communal
palace of, 24 ; gaiety of, 25, 26 ,
Court of, 278 ; grounds of the
palace at, 280, 521 ; bathing of
men and women together, 492
Bucentaur, The, 138
Bull-feasts, 65, 76, 502
Buren, Floris, Count de, 277
Burgos, 65, 255 ; cathedral, 66
Burgundian treasury. The, 24, 153
Burgundy, the Bastards of, 26 ; the
army of, 19, 20, 146, 153
‘ Butter War ’ of Liegmtz, The,
481 et seq.

Butzbach, 10 , 23 , 43, 70 , 167 , 516

Cadagun River, The, 63
Cadsand, 177, 191
Caesar Borgia, 133
Calabria, John, Duke of, 52, 98
Calais, 29, 184, 185, 190, 307, 353,
^ 385, 394

Calvete, 28 , 105 , 520, 521, 523
Camerich, 372

Campeggio, The Legate, 345
Qandes, 56

Canta la Piedra, 75
Canterbury, 31, 189 ; the Palsgrave
at, 388

Capua, The Archbishop of, 312
Carmthia, 117
Carrillo, Alfonso, 96
Casola, Pietro, 114 - 16 , 506
Cason, General, 347
Castile, Inhabitants of, 64 , sovereigns
of, 71 ; orders of, 75 , treatment
of men and beasts m, 254, 318;
married ladies of, 258
Castile and Aragon, united thrones
of, 252

Cat, The, 147
Catalonia, 99

Catherine of Aragon, Queen, 255, 306;
divorce, 354 ,* implicated in con-
spiracy, 355

Catherine of Austria, 278
Catherine de’ Medici, Queen, 352, 366
Cerignola, The victory of, 266
Cervera, 317
Ceuta, 79

Channel passage. The, horrors of,

492

Chantilly, reception of the Palsgrave
Frederick’s ambassadors at, 350 ,
the castle of, 383
Chapuys, 358, 360 , 528
Charlemagne, the fragments of, 16
Charles IV., the Emperor, 250
Charles V., the Emperor, 361 ; his
birth, 251 , his arrival at Tournai,
277 ; under the tutelage of Pals-
grave Frederick, 277, 278 ; his
affiances, 278 ; confers on Frederick
the Order of the Golden Fleece,
289 ; goes to Middelburg, 290 ; his
wrath at the suggested alliance
between Eleonore and Frederick,
296 ; holds out the hand of friend-
ship to Frederick, 306 ; elected
Emperor, 306 ; visits England,
306 ; crowned at Aix, 307 ; deter-
mmes to bestow his sister Eleonore
on Francis I., 312 , entertains Fre-
derick, 321 ; at Piacenza, 335 ; at
Parma, 337 ; enters Mantua, 339 ;
again m Spam, 373 ; his grief at
the death of the empress, 379
Charles VI. of France, a legend
attributed to, 389
Charles VII. of France, 55
Charles VIII., 186, 518 ; elopes with
Anne of Brittany, 199 ; mission
to, 221

Charles IX., 426

Charles the Bold of Burgundy, 17 , 19,
i33» 140 ; meets Duke Philip, 21 ,
splendour at his marriage, 24 ;
meetmg between him and Freder-
ick III-, 141 , his artillery, i47»
508 ; his first great defeat, 152,
his death, 153

Charlotte, Queen of France, 57, 49^

INDEX

543

Charolois, The Earl of. See Charles
the Bold
Ch^tellerault, 59
* Cherry Pit,* The game of, 267
Chi^vres, The Seigneur de, 277, 282,
283, 288, 296-99, 523 ; Madame
de, 300

Chimay, The Comte de, at Neuss,
J5J, 146 ; Prince de, 195
Chimneys, 115, 238, 505
Christian of Holstem, 362, 387
Christian II. of Denmark, 278, 362
Clarence, George, Duke of, 47
Claude, of France, betrothed to the
future Charles V., 252, 264, 278
Cleves, Anne of, 384 ; Adolph I. of,
19, 175; John I. of, 18, 25, 58;
John III. of, 386, 390, Mary o:^
58 ; Philip of, 175, 176, 182, 190,
191, 192 ; at Cadsand, 178 ; makes
overtures of peace, 196
Coimbra, Pedro, Duke of, loi
Cologne, Archbishop of, Rupert, 14,
145 ; Gebhardt II , 443
Cologne, 14, 273, 442 et seq.
Commynes, P. de, his account of
Duke Arnold, 17,* of the Dow
Countries, 18 ; of Edward IV., 35 ;
of Kmg Lancelot’s death, 55 ; of
Queen Charlotte of Savoy, 57 ; of
the battle of Pans, 59 ; of the
meeting of Louis XI. and Henry
IV., 71; of the Conference of the
tie de Faisans, 74 , of Freder-
ick III., 118 ; of Charles the Bold,
140, 151 ,* of Germany, 158, 159 ;
of Ghent, 194; of the taking of
Arras, 201; of the ignorance of
the nobility, 506

Compostella, Santiago de, 81, 84,
306 ; Archbishop of, 84 ; cathedral,
86 ; dramatic scene at, 90
Cond6, Henri, Prince de, 429
Conflans, Treaty of, 19, 56
Contarini, Gasparo, 312; his descrip-
tion of Queen Mary of Hungary, 344
CoppenoUe, The brothers, 195
Cordes, Lord. See D’Esquerd^
Cordova, Gonsalvo da, 264, 267, 289
Corvinus. See Matthias of Hungary
Coryat, 106, 112, 138, 524, 531
Cota, Sancho, 290
Cotorella Villa, 383
Courtesans, 80

Crane feathers, as an adornment,
479

Cranmer, Archbishop, 334
Cnvelli, 104

Cromwell, Thomas, 354, 387* 389»
^ 393, 394-

Crosseu, 155, 457 „ ,

Croy, Guillaume de. See Chievres
Cueva, B^tran de la, 71
Ciudad Rodrigo, 76

Damme, 198

Dancing madness, 108
Dannenberg, 514

Dai^h Successitm, The, 36a, 373,
^ 387, 395

Darro River, The, 322
Daubeny, Lord, 184
Dauphin^, Strength of, 103
Da Vinci, Lionardo, 104
Daxe, 62

Death-howlings, 92, 504
De Lalaing, Antoine, 72, 73, 75, ps,
97, 99, 167, 253, 260, 262, 270, 273,

323

De La Marche, Olivier, 24, 508
‘ Delfa,’ The herb, 320
Denmark, the state of, 373
Deschamps, Eustache, 187 ; his
description of Calais, 29 ; of the
English, 499 ; of the igaciranoe
the nobility, 506 ; of tails, 5x5
D’Esquerdes, The French gcii®al,
176, 185, 202, 205
Diets, Tournaments at, 164
Dinant, 140

D’Isemay, The Envoy, 352, 356
Dixmude, The relief of, 185
Doria, Andrea, 364
Dorothea of Denmark, 362, 373, 3^5,
382, 531

Dover, The Palsgrave Frederiek’s
welcome at, 385
Du Guesdin, 133, 167
Durer, Albrecht, his portraits of
Frederick II., 271, 307, 491, 492,
520

Ear of Ccam and Ermine, Order
the, 51

Edward IV. of England, 34, 40, 50 ;
his smgers, 495 ; int^bits the
importation of many ford^ goods,
500

Edzard, Count, of East Friesteid,

229

Egmond, Duke of Guriders, Addtph
of, 16 ; Amcdd o^ 17 ; OKsdes

217, 273

Ehingen, Jorg von, 75, 78, 509, 533
Eichstadt, The Biriiop o^ 123
Eleonore, The Empress, 78, 118
£2e<more of Austria, 278 ei setq., 287,
288, 31D 373* 383; goes with
Charles V. to Middeibnrg, 290;
urged by Fiederick to get her
brother’s consent to marriage, 294 ;
submits to her brother’s wilh 297 »
jSrst marriage, 301 ; betrothal to
Francis L, 312; receives visits
from the Palsgrave, 37X, 382
Elizabeth of England, 354,

444, 445

Elizabeth Woodvilici, Queen. See
Woodviile

Elizabeth of Ymrk, Queen, 3^ 37,
189

INDEX

544

Elk*s hoof, the curative property of,
402

El Padron, 82, 83, 90
Elvas, 93

Elvira of Cordova, 289
Emden, 234

Emmanuel of Portugal, 294, 299, 301,

3 ” . ,

Emmench, 401, 45o> 45i , ,

England, Landscape of, 44 >' the ale
of, 45, 499 ; banquets of, 494, 5^7 ;
customs in, 42, 496 , music m, 42 ;
opidence of, 41, 495
English Navy, The, 31, I93» 493
English People, The, customs of, 42,
496 ; wealth of, 41, 495 ; Bohemians'
view of the character of, 45, 499 ;
fashions m dress, 395, 53i J
with tails, 189, 512, 513
English sporting dogs, 358, 528
English Sweat, The, 338, 525
Enkhausen, 237

Eppingen, Hartmann von, 244, 349,

364, 395

Erasmus, Desiderius, 8, 33, 42, 128,

193 , 496, 500, 503 ,

Eric of Brunswick, Duke, 438, 439
Staples, 206

Evora, 91

Exeten Anne, Duchess of, 39
Eyb, Ludwig von, the Elder, 123;
the Younger, 123 et seq , ; Albrecht

von, 123

Fabriano, Gentile, 104
Famy, 439

Ferdinand I., The Emperor, 260, 307,
309, 326, 344, 361 ; King of Bo-
hemia and Hungary, 324, 406 ;

, receives Fredenck, 328
Fttdinand of Aragon, 97, 133, 252,
253 ; his passion for hawking, 256
Ferrara, 136, 340 ; Alfonso I-, Duke
of, 341 ; R^e€, Duchess of, 350
Filarete, 106
Finis Terra, Cape, 87-9
Flanders, 27, 183, 290
Fleurange, Sr, de, 333, 517, 518
Fluere, The game of, 252
Foix, Gaston de, 54
Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, The, 116, 332
Fonseca, Alonso da, 84
Forest, Count Raymond de, 60
Fortescue, Sir John, 44; his com-
ments on the keeping of the sea,
494 ; his description of France,
502

Foscari, Francesco, the Doge, 112
Four Lands, The* 160, 164
France, The fertility of, 62, 502
Francis I , of France, 312, 313, 324,
386, 518 ; dislikes Eleonore, 314 ;
suggests a French alliance to the
Palsgrave Frederick, 349 ; receives
an embassy from the Palsgrave,

359 ; remodels his army, 365 ; his
warning to the Palsgrave, 371 ; his
character, 339, 367, 382

Francis IL, Duke of Brittany, 51,
198

Francis, The Dauphin, 366

Franconia, 158, 160

Franeker, 233

Frankfort, 14, 449 ; the Town Council
of, 441, 442

Frederick I., Elector Palatine, 13, 249

Frederick II., Elector Palatme, 123 ;
birth of, 249 ; sent to the Nether-
lands, 251 ; cares and troubles of,
273 seq., 520 ; gams the friend-
ship of Maximilian, 274, 520; ap-
pears under the English flag, 274-6;
is attached to the person of the
future Charles V, at Tournai, 277 ;
his visit to Luxemburg, 281 ;
returns to Brussels, 285 ; receives
from Charles V. the Order of the
Golden Fleece, 289 ; urges Eleonore
to get her brother’s consent to
their marriage, 294-6 ; is dismissed
by Charles, 298; returns to Ger-
many, 30X ; reappears at the
Court of Maximilian, 302 , his
prospects, 305 } visits England,
306 ; goes to Aix, 307 ; appomted
Imperial Statthalter, 307 ; takes
up his residence at Nuremberg,
307 ; dijfficulties between him and
the Archduke Ferdinand, 309 , his
appeal to Eleonore, 312 ; enter-
tamed by Charles V., 321 ; pro-
posed alliance with Queen Mary of
Hungary, 326 et s$q. ; commander
of Imperial forces, 327 ; has
audience with Charles V. at Mantua,
340 ; goes to Ferrara, 340 ; at
Venice, 341 ; at Innsbruck, 343,
344 ; attends the Diet of Augsburg,
345, 346 ; his further courtships,
348 ; applies for the hand of the
Due de Gmse’s daughter, 349 ;
his letter to Henry VIII., 353 ;
treaty for his marriage with
Princess Mary of England, 360 ;
his opinion of the remodelling of
the French army, 369 ; visits Queen
Eleonore, 371 ; his marriage at
Heidelberg, 372 ; revisits courts of
Europe, 374 et seq. ; detained at
Calais, 385 ; bis welcome at Dover,
385 ; m London, 387, 388 ; is
bidden to Windsor, 390 ; his recep-
tion at Windsor, 392 ; his affection
for Henry VIIL, 395, 530; his
personal devotion to Charles and
Ferdinand, 396 ; portraits of, 491 ;
letters written by him, 523

Frederick III., Elector Palatine, 429

Frederick III., The Emperor, 7, 13,
117 ; sets out to Rome and Vemce,
135 ; his behaviour at Vemce, 139 ;

INDEX 54S

Ms meeting with Charles the Bold,
141 ; in Flanders, 175
French Court, The, manners of, B 51
French legionaries, The, 371, 529
Frieslanders, The, 224 ; flight of their
army, 227

Frisius, Tetanius, 311
Frodnar, Achatz, 12, 84, 85 ; at a
tilting joust, 23

Froissart, 9 ; his opinion of the Eng-
lish, 499

Frundsberg, Georg von, 124, 211 ;
Kaspar von, 334

Fuchs, Neidhart, 222, 223, 225, 226,
228, 229

Fuchs zu Bmpach, Waltpurga, 238
Fugger, Anton, 332, Marx, 435, 436
ruggers, The, 270, 332, 363 ; palace
436, 534

Galicia, 9, 81 et seq,

Gallegos, A horde of, 90
Games, at the French Court, 253, 517
Garda, Lake, 108
Garoime River, The, islands of, 62
Garzonus, on courtesans, 80
Geisterland, 225
Generalife, The, garden of, 322
George of Bohemia, Kmg. See
Podebrad

George of Saxony, Duke, 221, 223
German corns, the value of early,
402

German forests, 165
Germany, Gentlemen of, xiv., 158,
166 ; families in, 154, 509 ; state
of, 309 ; trial of oflEenders in, 160,
509 ; pageantry of, 167, 509 ; early
firearms in, 510 ; education in, 250,
516 ; treatment of men and beasts
in, 254, 518 ; fasMon of wearing the
hair in, 279, 521 ; knowledge of
music amongst the ladies o:^ 285,
522 ; drinking in, 311, 524 ; use of
carriages m, 415, 531 , use of gar-
lands in, 424, 532 ; favourite col-
ours for dresses, 479» 535
Geyer, Florian, 325
Ghent, opulence of, 27 ; submission
of, 194, 195

Girdle of Our Lady, The, 15, 40
Giustiniani, Marmo, 349, 266
Glayon, The Seigneur de, 285-7
Glogau-Crossen War, The, 155
Goldberg, 412

Golden Fleece, Order of, 25, 235, 289
Golden Legend, The, 16 , 33 , 77 , 83 ,
93 , 513 ; story of two pilgrims m,
318

Golden Ring, The, company of, 356,
357

Goldsmith’s Row, 188, 511
Gomorra, 317
Gdrlitz, 458
Gran, 328

Granada, 320-24 ; the treaty of, 264
Granson, 152, 153

Granvelle, Nicholas Perrenot de, 336,
337 , 344 , 345 , 348, 361
Gratz, 1 17
Grison, 200

Grdditzberg, The castle of, 409, 461-4
Grohmann, Christoph, The family of,

Gronmgen, 224, 228
Guadaloupe, Convent of our Lady at,
95 ; Hospital of, 96
Guadiana River, The, natural tunnel
of, 94 ; valley of, 319
Guelderland, The duchy of, 16, 217,
273 ; the Dukes of. See Egmond
Guernsey, The Bohemians driven to,
50

Gumegate, 274

Gmse, The Due de, the daughter of,
349 , 350

Haarlem, 179-81

Hainau, 460, 462 ; Duke Friedrich
ordered to, 471, 472
Hampton Court, 294 , 396
Hardt, The, 249
Harlingen, 236
Haro, The Count of, 65
Hartmannus. See Eppingen
Heerenberg, 453

Heidelberg Castle, Durer’s picture of,
271, 520 ; the Court of, 250 ;
motto on, 329 ; marriage of the
Palsgrave Frederick at, 372 ; cross-
bow contest at, 310
Heilmann, Hans, 459
Heinrich of Saxony, Duke, 232, 233,

235

Heinrich XI. of Liegnitz, 398, 406, 412,
417, 419-32, 434 , 437 , 440-43,
446, 448 ; his schemas for raising
funds, 427 ; enters on a pilgrimage
through Germany to borrow money,
428 , declmes to see Duke Fried-
rich, 459 ; ordered to live on his
estates at Hainan, 46a; goes to
Groditzberg, 462, 463 ; his pastime
there, 464 ; his predatory habits,
466, 467 ; returns to Pragnie, 467 ;
Ms return to Liegnitz, 471 ; com-
manded to attend the Diet of Bres-
lau, 480 ; summoned to Prague,
480, 483 ; prepares for a siege at
Liegnitz, 481 ; removed to Breslau,
487 ; his escape, 487 ; death, 487
Henneberg, Count William of, 172
Henry of Anjou (Henri III.), 426, 520
Henry the Navigator, Prince, 88
Henry IV. of Castile, 71, 72, 78, 96
Henry V., of England, 46
Henry VI., Ineptitude of, 31 ; his
navy, 493

Henry VII., 133, 184, 188, 190, 193,
198, 199, 205 ; a trick of, 207

INDEX

546

Henry VIIL, SS 3 , 355, seo, 387 ;
invades France, 274, 275 ;
treaty of peace, 276 ; entertains
Hubertus, 354 ; entertains Freder-
ick, 386 et seq , ; his power of
tossing off bumpers, 357, 527
Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, anecdote
of, 27 5 j 391 ; his description of the
French palace at Chantilly, 350
Herod, 83

Hesse, The Landgrave Philip of,
326, 329, 331, 336 ; the Landgrave
George of, 441
Hoby, Thomas, 341
Hoeks, The, 182, 224, 511
Hohenlohe, Counts of, 13
HoUdnt, Hans von, 163
Holy Roman Crown, The, 305
Huguenots, i 29 , 438
Hunersbach, 450
Hutten, Ulrich von, 127
Hypocras, 196

He de Faisans, The, 74
Innsbruck, 267, 268, 343, 344; the
curiosities of, 270
Inquisition, The, 377
Isabella of Castile, 252, 253
Isabella, the Empress, 321, 379
Isabella, Queen of Denmark, 278, 281
Isabella of Portugal, 27
Italy, The Renaissance m Northern,
104

Jan of Zehrowitz, 19, 22, 83, 118
Jettenbuhel, The, 271
Joachim II. of Brandenburg, 405
Joanna, Queen of Bohemia, 7, 10, 119
John II. of Aragon, 71, 97, loi
Jousts, 21, 287, 522
Juana, Queen of Aragon, 98
Juana, Queen of Castile, 71
Juana la Loca, 252, 259, 260

Kabeljaws, The, 511
Kaden, Michael von, 336, 337
Kaisersheim, 437
Kaneloser, 211
Kmg’s Evil, The, 313, 525
Kiss, The English, 42, 496-8
Kittlitzin, Frau, 421-3, 425, 426, 476,
477

Klerzy, 62

Knighthood, German, 127, 159, 166,
509

Kmghts Templars, The, 389
Kmghts’ War, The, 309
Knormger, The Abbot of, 324
Kollebrat, Lord Jan Serobky, 22, 23
Koller, Eachanas, 444

Ladislas of Poland, 75

Ladislas Postumus, 7, 54, 55
Lancaster, Edward of, 502 ; Margaret
of, 35 ; Philippa of, 79
Lancelot, 132, 213, 533
Landsknechts, Customs of, 129-131,
180 , 181 , 196, 208, 210 , 211, 226 l
228

Lannoy, Charles de, 283-5, 298
Lanuza, Don Juan de, 277
Las Huelgas, Nunnery of, 68
Lassota, 486
Latimer, Bishop, 354
Laval, Jeanne de, 52
Leeuwarden, Siege of, 227, 234, 510
Legnago, 334
Leib, Kilian, 124
Lev. See Rozmital
Liege, 182, 183 ; siege of, 20 ; sub-
mission of, 19, 140, the Bishop of,
183

Liegmtz, The Lords of, 398 ; the Court
of, 405 , ducal debts of, 427 ; gaiety
at, 456 ; siege of, 481
Liegmtz, Duke Friedrich II. of, 405,
406 ; Friedrich III. of, 406, 410,
412 , Friedrich IV. of, 443, 456,
460, 461, 465, 466, 470, 481, 483,
487, 489 ; Heinnch XL of, see ;
Sophia of, 421, 468, 478
Umiohon, The, 293
Lindau, The Diet of, 224
Linz, 328

Lions, The gift of, 417
Lisbon, 89

Lisle, Lord, 385, 386, 393 , 395 ;

Lady, 388, 394
Locusts, Hordes of, 77
Lodovico II Moro, 230
Lofen, 177
Loire, The river, 52
London, Bridge, 34, 188 ; city, 34,
188, 512 ; customs, 42, 496 ,*

gardens, 41, 494 . goldsmiths in,
42, 188, 511 ; tombs in, 41, 389;
Tower of, 41, 188 , 388
Longueville, The Due de, 350
Lorraine, Sack of, 151, 439, 440
Los Ahxares, The Palace of, 322
Louis II. of Hungary, 12 1, 278, 324
Louis XI., of France, 19, 35, 60, 71,
133, 140, 200 ; his meeting With
Rozmital, 56

Louis XII., 252, 265, 274, 517
Lublin, 416

Luchau, Conz vom 165
Ludwig, Elector Palatme, 242, 266,
345

Luna, D. Rodenck de, 84
Lupa, Prmcess, 83
Lusi^an, 60

Luther, Martin, 310, 326, 331, 346,
506

Lutheran States, Protestants of. 336
Luxemburg, Visit of Frederick to,
281

Lyons, 263

INDEX

54;

Machiavelli, 239 ^ 240, 369
Madrid, 255, 362 ; flagellauts of, 255,
519 ,* the treaty of, 313
Madrigallego, 94
Magdalena of France, 54, 55
Magenta, 103

Mainz, 429 ; Cardinal of, 347 , tourna-
ment at, 160
Malvoisie, 195
Mantegna, 104

Mantua, 334, 339 ; Federigo II.,
Duke of, 340, 348 ; Isabella of,
340

March mto Cologne, The, 273
Marck, Robert de la, 182, 371
Margaret of Austria, Regent, 199,
209, 277, 288, 290
Margaret of Lancaster, Queen, 35
Margaret of Savoy, Regent, 345
Margaret of York, 24, 39, 140
Marguerite of Navarre. See Navarre
Mana, Queen of Portugal, 291, 301
Marillac, 386-8, 392, 393
Mamold, 245
Maroton, Lewis, 278
Martorell, 99

Martyr, Peter, his description of
Juana La Loca, 260
Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, 174, 175
Mary of England, Princess, 354, 360
Mary, Queen of Hungary, 326, 328,
343-5, 362, 372, 383, 384, 530
Masquerades, 420
Matalebres, 317

Matthias of Hungary, 119, 133, 173,
207

Maximilian I., The Emperor, 128,
144, 184, 219, 268 ; his boyhood,
118 ; customs of his landsknechts,
129 ; education of, 135 ; his con-
test with his subjects, 173 ; capture
and imprisonment, 176 ; release,
177 ; signs a treaty of peace with
Charles VIIL, 186 ; Anne of Brit-
tany betrothed to him, 199 ; me-
thods of execution m his army,
210 ; summons the Diet of Worms,
217, 219 ; treaty with Louis XII.,
253 ; his recreations at Innsbruck,
267 ; his entry into Cologne, 273 ;
joms Henry VIIL’s standard, 274 ;
leaves Henry, 276; his conversa-
tions with Frederick, 302 et seq , ;
his death, 305
Maximilian II., 428
Mechlin, 277 ; bathmg of men and
women together, 492
Medellm, 94

Medical practice, 131, 231, 307, 338,
526

Medici, Catherine de, 107, 352 ; Cosmo
de’, 366

Medina del Campo, 255
Medina Pomar, 65

Meissen, 231 |

Melegnano, 106 1

Melusine, 5, 60
Mercer’s Chapel, The, 40
Merida, 93

Mertschutz, 476, 480, 483
Metz, 439

Meung-sur- Loire, 56
Mezeray, 55, 60
Michelozzo, 107
Middelburg, 290-92
Milan, 104 ; Corte d’ Arengo or Ducale,
105 \ citadel, 106; church of San
Ambrogio, 107

Milan, Dukes of. See Sforza. Chris-
tin^ Duchess of, 383, 530
Molm del Rev, 99, 100, 306
Molinet, 145,' 148 - 50 , 191 , 197 , 200 ,
219 ; tiis account of Duke Albrecht’s
death, 235 ; his account of the
French auxiliaries, 511
Monasteries, Dangers in, 364, 529
Monkeys, popularity of in Germany,
80

Montferrat, The Marqms William of,
103, 107 ; Bomfazio of, 348 ;

Giovanni Giorgio of, 348 ; Maria
of, 348 ; Marghenta of, 348
Montlh6ry, The battle of, 19, 59
Montmorency, The Constable of, 387
Montpellier, a ball at, 534
Montserrat, 102, 364
Moors, The, 80
Morat, The rout of, 153
More, The, 390
Monce, Sir Christopher, 386
Morley, Lord, 184, 511
Moro, The Doge Cristoforo, no
Morton, Lord John, Archbishop of
Canterbury, 188
Mount joy, Lord, 37
Morysme, Sir Richard, 530
Muller, Johann, 128
Mur, The river, 118
Mus%cal Pilgrim, The, 64 , 89 , 103

Nancy, 153 , 438

Nantes, visited by the Bohemians,
51

Nassau, Count, Engelbert of, 195 ;
Henry of, 335, 339, 342; John
of, 441

Naumburg, 142

Navagero, 61 , 65 , 94 ; his description
of Toledo, 259 ; of Barcelona, 262 ;
of Valladolid, 518 ; of heat in
Spam, 319

Navarre, Blanche, Queen of, 98 ;
Isabeau of, 349, 350, 351 , Mar-
guerite, Queen of, 379-81

Naxos, 329

Neapolitan Succession, The, contest
of, 264

Nemours, The Due de, 264, 266

Netherlands, The, 173

Neuburg, 429

Neumarkt, 357, 363, 379

INDEX

548

Neuss, Nunaery of, i6 ; siege of, ISl,
145 et seq,

Neustadt, Wiener, 118 ; on the
Hardt, 249

Nieuport, The relief of, 185

Nismes, 102

Nobility, Ignorance of the, 127, 506

Norman regiment of France, The,
366, 368

Nuremberg, 347, 43 1 ; stay of Lev at,
II ; its arsenal of artillery, 11 :
Diet at, 16 182 ; Conference at,
347, 526 ; Frederick takes up
residence there, 307 ; the ladies of,
307, 30S ; the medical service of,
508

Oldenburg, The Count of, 362, 373
Olmedo, 73

Olyfemus, or Oliver, 61, 315
Orange, The Dowager Prmcess of,

Orle^f^Sharles of, 58, 492, 513 ;

Henry of, 352, S 66
Osorio, D. Luis, 84
Ostendorfer, 491

Padua, no, 333

Palatme, the Count, Johann Casimir,
438, 439, 440 j Otto Heinrich, 523 ;
Philip, 328, 329, aeo, 523
Pamplona, The district of, 316
Par6, Ambroise, 507, 525
Paris, Submission of, 19; battle of,
5^ ; Bishop of, 351 ; Frederick’s
visits to, 252, 379» 381
Parma, 334, 337
Paros, 329

‘ Parsehart ’ wme, 195

Paston, John, 18, 24, 163

Paul II,, Pope, y, 137

Paul III., Pope, SB 6

Pavia, 312, 365

Payen, 44, ill, 499

Peasants* War, The, 242, 309

Pedro of Portugal, Dom, tomb of, loi

Peronne, 56, 144

Philip, The Fleeter Palatme, Court
of, 251, 271 ; will of, 523
Philip of Burgundy, 17, 56 , 224;

meetmg with his son, 20
Philip the Handsome, Archduke,
174, 209, 251 seq , ; his reception
in Lyons, 263 ; death, 273
Philip of Hesse. See Hesse
Phoebus, Francois, de Foix, 54
Piacenza, 332, 334, 335 ; plague at,
336

Pietello, 340

Pike, The, use of in war, 515
Pilgrimage, The passion for, 8
Pfeanello, 104

Pius II. (,®neas Sylviusj, 6, 7, J2, 21 ,
55 , 166, 501

Po, The river, 340, 341
Podebrad, George of, 6, 13, 57, 117,
119 ; religion of, 7 ; his faroily
alliance, 7 ; elected king, 7 ;
treachery attributed to, 55
Poitiers, Madame Alienor de, 21
Poland, The Piasts of, 405 ; the suc-
cession to the Crown of, 416, 426
Pomerania, The battlefields of, 155
Ponte vedra, 82, 90, 91
Poole, Visit of the Bohemians to, 49
Poppel, Niklas, 14 , 496, 499
Portugal, 77, 288

Poynmgs, Sir Edward, 1937 i95, 514
Prague, 119, 428, 430, 467, 480, 483 ;

the castle of, 484-7
* Pfoirte d^Esnay,* The, 205
Promnitz, Fraulein Hese, 424
Pyrenees, The, cultivation of the
slopes of, 63

Rabbits, The custom of netting, 451
Reading, The Abbey of, 46
Redondella, 81
Reed-toumeys, 254, 256
Reformation, The, xiii., 325, 405
Regall of France, The, 32
Renaissance, The, xiii., 104
Ren6 of Anjou, 52, 101
Ren6 of Lorraine, 15 1
Rennes, 199

Reuchlin, The new humanism of,
128, 250

Rhine, The, Barrmg of, 146, 147
Rhmeland, 160
Rhodes, 329

Riemberger, The brothers, 118

Rieter, Sebald, 81

Ritters, The German, 158

Rivers, Lord, 37

Rogendorf, 326, 327

Rohan, The Prmce de, 359

Rohrbach, Bernhard, 11 ; Jacklem,

325

Rokyzana, Archbishop, 120
Roland, 61, 314, 315
Romans, King of. See Maximilian
Queen of. See Sforza, Bianca
Roncesvalles, 61

Rosenberg, The Lord J org, 162, 163 ,
the Lord, 485, 486
Rotya Planta, The castle of, 83
Roussillon, 102

Rozmital, Lev of, his chroniclers,
1-8 ; religion, 7 ; supports George
Podebrad, 7 ; object of his journey,
8 ; in Germany, 10-16 ; in the
Netherlands, 17-29 ; in England,
30-^49 ; in France, 50-62, 103 ; in
Spain and Portug^, 63-102 ; in
Italy, 103-116 ; at the Imperial
Court, 1 17 ; welcome in Bohemia,
120 ; his death, 121 ; his son, X2i ;
origin of his name * The Bohemian
Ulysses,’ 107

INDEX

Rudolph II., The Emperor, 430, 457
Rudolf of Su]z, Count, 135
Ruthenes, The, 157

Sachs, Hans, 131 , 307, 328
Sagan, Duke J ohann of, 155
St. Adrian, Mountam, 374
Ste. Catherine de Fierbois, 59
St. Etaples, Fabre de, 380
St. George, The Order of, 46
St. J ames the More, 82, 90 ; Shrine
of, 9 ; relics of, 86
St. J ean de Luz, 62
St. Malo, The Bohemians at, 50 ; a
rarity in,

St. Martin Cathedral, Tours, 54
St. Maurice, The Cloister of, 53
St. Maximi^ Monastery, i43
Salamanca, 76

Salisbury, visit of the Bohemians to,
43 ; * images * at, 47 ; Castle, 47 ;
Cathedral, 48

San Ambrogio, The Church of, 107
Sandwich, 30, 31, 307, 354
Salm, The Count of, 439
Saragossa, 97, 99
Sastrow, Bart., 406
Satz, The Castle of, 156
Saumur, 51

Savoy, Bona of, see; Charlotte of,
57, 498 ; Louise of, 312 ; Margaret
of, 345

Saxony, Albrecht of, see; Anna of,
12, 157 ; Augustus of, 4x5, 419 ;
Ernest of, 172 ; Frederick III. of,
303, 491; George of, 221, 533 ;
Heinrich of, see ; Sidonia, Duchess
of, 221 , 533

Scales, Anthony, Lord, x8
Schaschek of Mezihortz, diary of, i ;
credulity of, 3 ; disregard for cor-
rectness of nomenclature, 4 ; pass-
ports reproduced by, 10; takes part
in a wrestling bout, 22 ; adventure
with pirates, 99

Schaumburg, Wilwolt von, his bio-
grapher, 123 ; his career, 134 ;
sent to the Imperial Court, 135 ;
at the ceremony of the Tiber
Bridge, 137 ; his reception at
Venice, 137 ; his meetmg with
Charles the Bold, 141 ; closes his
connection with the Imperial
Court, 145 ; appears before Neuss,
145 ; returns to his family, 154 ;
goes to the Court of Albert Achilles
of Brandenburg, 155 ; fights in
Silesia and Pomerania, 156 ; his
exploits in Franconia, 158 ; his
romance, 168 ; joins Duke Ernest
of Saxony, 172 ; joins Duke
Albrecht of Saxony, 173 ; Chief
Captain, 176; atLofenandCadsand,
177 ; at Aerschot, 178 ; in Holland,
179 ; in Englan 4 184 ; rioting of

549

his soldiers, 208, 210 ; escapes to»
the camp of Albrecht, 213 ; in
Guelderland, 217 , at the Diet of
Worms, 217 ; goes on a mission to
Charles VIII., 221 ; rescues Duke
Albrecht from reb^ious burghers
of Brussels, 222 ; sent to Friesland,
224; his skill as a general, 227,
515 ; his loyalty to his master,
230 ; his illness, 231 ; relieves
Franeker, 233 ; adventures on the
sea, 236 ; arrives in Holland, 237 ;
his castle, 238 ; his marriage, 238 ;
his character, 239
Schellendorf, Margarethe, 473 et seq,
Scherdmgen, 337
Schmalkaldic War, The, 396
Schneck, 236

Schonburg, Ernst von, 176
Schramm, Hans, 417, 486
Schumdiger, 165
Schwaz, The village of, 270
Schweinichen, Hans von, memoirs of,
397; date of their composition,
407 ; his duties as page, 410 ; his
school-life, 431 ; becomes Equerry
to Duke Heinrich, 426 ; starts
with him on his travels, 428 ; goes
to Heidelberg, 429 ; to Augsburg,
433 ; campaign m France, 438 ;
returns to Germany, 441 ; at
Cologne, 442-50, becomes Steward
of Household, 451 , at Emmerich,
453 ; returns to Silesia, 456 ;
has an audience with Rudolph II.
at Breslau, 457 ; his troubles
on the Groditzberg, 463 ; at
Prague, 468 ; at Liegnitz, 472 ;
his courtship, 473 et seq. ; his
marriage, 479 ; close of his court
life, 487; enters the services of
Duke George of Brieg and Duke
Friedrich, 489 ; marries again,
489; his eaiperiences at Dannen-
berg, 514

Schweinichen, Jorg von, 409 ; Salome
von, 418

Scribes, contempt of the nobility for,
i27> 506

Sedan, Castle of, 371
Segovia, The Alcazar of, 72
Segura, 374

Seidenberg, Martin, 454
Selim, The Sultan, 329
Semmler, a merchant of Ulm, 333
Seating, 153

Sforza, Bianca, Duchess, 105 ; Bianca,
Queen, 219, 220, 271 ; Filippo
Maria, 104, 105, 107; Francesco,
104; Galeazzo Mana, 104, 105,
107, 140 ; Lodovico il Moro,
230

Sheep, Flocks of, 44, 498
Shells, worn by pilgrims, 87, 503
Sickingen, Franz von, 242, 325 ;
memoirs o^ 124

INDEX

5 SO

Sigismimd, The Emperor, 46, IZQ
Si^smimd II., of Poland, 288, 417 ;
death of, 426

Silesia, Ihe battlefields of, 155 ; the
princes of, 405
Skating, The art of, 26
Sluys, 182 ; siege of, 190. seg . ;
submission of, 196 ; description of,

513

Sofia of Poland, Princess, 164
Spain, The ladies of, 72 ; piety in,
377 ; inhospitality m, 170
Spanish Nuns, 69
Spinelli, 289 , 299 , 299 , 301
Spinola, The Marqms, 27 S
Spires, 247, 3^4, 326
Spurs, The, Battle of, 275
Squarcione, 104

Stag-hunting, 252, 345» 392, 517
Stange, Captain Samson, 403
Stork, The, 147

Stove, The, use of for heating, 238,

515

Stuttgart, A tournament at, 162
Suabia, 160 ; ladies of, 163
Suabian League, The, 158
Suffolk, The Duke of, 390, 391
Suleiman, The Emperor, 328
Sweating Sickness, The, 221 , 337, 338

Tafur, Pero, 16 , 27 , 28 , 492 , account
of the arraignment of offenders in
Germany, 509 ; of Sluys, 513
Tagliamento, The, 117
Tangier, 79

‘ Tarantism,* a festival of, 108
Tetzel, Gabriel, his record of his
travels, 2 ; his credulity, 3 ; his
disregard for correctness of nomen-
clature, 4 ; visited by Lev at
Nuremberg, ii ; at a tiltmg joust,
23, ri8 ; his reward, 120
Theodoric, The Palace of, 109
Therouanne, Henry VIII. enters, 275
Thesingen, 431

Thomas, Hubertus, 62 , 61 , 102 , 241 ;
historical works of, 242 ; his
merits as a writer, 242 ; his ofScial
career, 243 ; his knowledge of
languages and the classics, 244 ;
his superstitions, 245 ; his loyalty
and self-sacrifice, 246 , illness,
323 ; imprisoned, 332 ; released,
333 ; falls a victim to the Sweating
Sickness, 337 ; visits Henry VIII.
as an Ambassador, 353 et seq, ;
diplomacy of, 356 ; despatched to
Denmark, 362 ; meets the Emperor
Charles in Madrid, 362, 363 ;
travels with Frederick round
Europe, 388 et seq,

Tiber Bridge, The, ceremony of, 137,
508

Toi (Douai), The wives of, 213

Toledo, 255, 259, 376; the Arch-

bishop of, 71, 96 ; Cathedral and
Bible at, 97

Tournai, Henry VIII ’s entry into,
275 ; arrival of the future.
Charles V. at, 277

Tournaments, 12, 160, 162, 218, 284

Tours, St. Martm’s Cathedral, 54

Trent, 343

Treves, 141

Treviso, no, 117

Trithemms, 507

Trutz Kaiser, The fortress of, 13
Tudor, Mary, 278
Tunstal, 289 , 292 , 296
Tuy, 81

Tuybelin, The dwarf, 53
Ulrich, Dr., 323

Unicom, Order of the, 160 ; horns
of. III, 504

Utrecht, The Bishop of, 222

Valladolid, 255» 5^8

Valleriolus, his account of surgery,

507

Vauldrey, Claude de, 219 ; Louis de,
201, 204, 211
Vega, The, 323
Venetian Glass, 435
Venice, no, in, 274, 33^, 337, 34i ;
election of a Podest^ at, 113 ;
St. Markus Church, in j palaces
of, 1 14, 115 ; Wilwolt’s reception
at, 137

Vendome, The Due de, the daughter
of, 349, 359

Viana, Carlos, Prmce of, 98, loi
Vienna, The relief of, 329-31
Villafranca, 339
Villa Ponca, The valleys of, 78
Villon, Francois, 5, 56
Viseii, Ferdinand, Duke of, 81
Vital, Laurent, 258 , 279, 289, 291 ,
294, 300, 503, 518, 522
Vo^land, The Court of, 165

Walcheren Island, 292
Wales, Arthur, Prince of, 255
Walhen, The, 204

War of the PubHc Weal, The, 19, 5i
Warwick, The King-Maker, 35, 37,
38, 39

Weale Publique. See War
Weddmgs, Tournaments at, 164
Westhoven, 292
Westminster, The city of, 512
Wey, William, 9 , 111
Wierstraat, 148
Wilwolt. See Schaumburg
Wmchelsea, 186

Windsor, Visit of the Bohemians to,
46 ; reception of the Palsgrave at,
390, 391

Wingfi^d, Sir Robert, 276
Wmzigen, The Castle of, 249

INDEX

Witzleben, Friedricli von, i86
Wolsev, Cardinal, 276, 296
Woodville, Elizabeth, 36, 50; her
chnrchmg m Westminster Abbey,
36 ; her charms, 38
Workumersyhl, Battle at, 233
Worms, The Diet of, 2iy et seq.j 325 ;

the Rose-garden of, 220
Wnothesley’s description of the
Duchess of Milan, 384 , 530
Wurtemberg, transformed into a
Duchy, 218 ; Ulrich von, 325

551

Wurzburg, Tournament at, 160, 509

2 apolya, John, 324, 329* 33 i
2 denko of Sternberg, 119
2 edlitz, Hans, 418

Zerklare, Thomasin of, 16 $, 172 , 320 ,
376 , 507

Ztmmerische Chronik, The, 16 , 49 ,
361 , 373 , 378 , $ 82 , 509
Zolner, Martm, 160
Zwiefalten, Monastery at, 437

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1. Books may be retained fw a jieriod n(rf
exceeding fifteeft diys.

Jolin. Miirr siy-

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Full text of "Gentlemen Errant"

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